CHAPTER 23 NORA #3
The ringer stayed in its port as long as it could. When the cradle reached the edge of the track, a small arm ejected it. Thomas's ring dropped into a shallow tray beside Marian's pillow.
I snatched it before it could slide away.
The metal was warm. Dad's ring, Mom's breath, Bella's voice, Declan's blood. All of it in one hand.
"Got it," I said.
"Good girl," Declan said, then looked like the words had slipped out of him before he could roughen them.
They landed everywhere. My knees, my throat, the torn skin under my bandage. I glared at him because it was safer than melting beside my mother's hospital cradle.
"Later," I said.
His eyes darkened. "I am going to hold you to that."
The exit lift opened ahead of us.
It was not clean like the lower chamber. Rust streaked the walls. Old ambulance straps hung from hooks. The floor was wide enough for the cradle and two bodies beside it, with a control panel split into red and blue halves. Above it, a sign flickered through dust.
MATERNAL EXIT LIFT
SURFACE ROUTE: SAINT brIGID AMBULANCE BAY
WARNING: MERCER CASE REMOVAL ENABLES EXTERNAL OVERRIDE
"External override from where?" I asked.
Cormac answered with a curse under his breath. "From the ambulance bay if Vale reaches a docked Mercy unit or old transport console."
"He said all doors," I whispered.
Gabriel's voice turned colder than the room. "Maeve."
"Stone men are moving on the upper ambulance entrance," Maeve said. "Two minutes out, possibly less."
A new voice cut across the comm, faint and distorted from another channel. Vale.
"I would hurry," he said. "Mercer was always better at exits than cages."
The lift lights went red.
EXTERNAL OVERRIDE REQUESTED
SOURCE: SAINT brIGID AMBULANCE BAY
COMMAND: WAKE REMAINING MATERNAL HOLDS
CONFIRMING THROUGH MERCER ROUTE KEY
Siobhan inhaled sharply. "If he wakes them from a distance, the unstable bodies may crash. Nora, he is using them to make you choose."
The panel inside the lift lit blue under my hand before I touched it.
DAUGHTER ROUTE MAY BLOCK OVERRIDE
REQUIRES PRESENCE AT SURFACE CONTROL
MATERNAL BODY ESCORT WILL CONTINUE TO MEDICAL EXIT WITH RED WITNESS
My hand closed around Dad's ring.
There it was. The split Vale had left for me. Stay with my mother in the lift, and he might wake every surviving woman tied to the archive. Leave Marian with Declan, and trust him to get her to Siobhan while I ran toward Vale.
Declan read my face. His expression changed so fast it hurt.
"Don't," he said.
"If I stay, he wakes them."
"If you go alone, I will tear this lift apart."
"You can barely stand."
"I can stand between her and anything that comes through those doors."
Marian's fingers moved against the blanket. I looked down. Her eyes were open to slits, fixed on me with terrible effort.
"Go," she breathed.
"Mom."
"Save... them."
The same words as before. Save them. Save the mothers, the stolen children, the names Dad had hidden, the truth Vale wanted to carry out in a black case.
Bending down, I kissed my mother's forehead. Her skin smelled of antiseptic and something faintly familiar under it, like soap from a life I had almost forgotten. My lips trembled against her.
"I am coming back," I whispered. "You hear me? I did not find you to leave you."
Toward Declan, her eyes shifted.
At the rail, Declan moved closer. His face had gone severe, but his voice changed when he spoke to her. Softer. Honest.
"I have her," he said. "I have both your girls."
Marian's gaze stayed on him for one more breath. Then her eyes closed.
EXTERNAL OVERRIDE THIRTY SECONDS TO ACCEPTANCE
"Nora," Gabriel said. "Choice."
Thomas's ring went onto the chain around my neck and under my shirt, against my skin. Then I stepped out of the lift before fear could nail me to the floor.
A rough hand closed around my wrist.
The touch was rough, desperate, and alive. It stopped me more surely than the cage had. His thumb pressed once against my pulse, and I saw all the things he could not say with Gabriel, Isabella, Maeve, Cormac, Siobhan, Aidan, and a dying room listening.
Come back. Don't make me survive you.
I turned my wrist until our fingers locked.
"Get my mother to Siobhan," I said. "Then come find me."
His eyes burned. "Run toward the sound of men screaming. That will be me."
"Romantic."
"Accurate."
I pulled free because staying one more breath would break me. The lift doors began to close with Marian and Declan inside. He held my stare until the gap narrowed to a strip of blood, blue light, and his battered hand on my mother's cradle.
Then the doors sealed.
The corridor to the surface opened on my left, lit by a line of blue lights and old red arrows stenciled along the concrete. Cold air rushed down it. Above, something heavy started up with a coughing engine.
Vale's voice slid through the speakers, closer now, amused and breathless.
"Come along, little bird. Every mother in my father's house is waking up, and you have twenty seconds to decide which ones get to survive you."
I ran toward him with my father's ring burning against my heart.