CHAPTER 24 DECLAN
The lift rose with a dead woman breathing under my hands.
Marian Brooks lay strapped to the old ambulance cradle, her skin gray under the white emergency lights, her fingers curled around the edge of the blanket Nora had shoved over her before she ran.
The whole metal cage shuddered around us.
Old chains clanked in the shaft. Somewhere above, an alarm kept beating the same warning through Saint Brigid's bones.
My ankle screamed each time the floor jumped.
The cuff had torn skin and left my joint hot and loose, but it held my weight.
Barely. "Declan," Siobhan said through the comm.
Her voice came clean and sharp, the way doctors sounded when panic had to wait outside the room.
"Tell me her color. Lips first. Hands second. Chest movement."
"Blue at the mouth. Fingertips pale. Breathing shallow. Chest stutters every third breath." I bent closer, watching Marian's throat work. "Pulse weak at the neck. Still there."
"Good. Keep her head to the side if she coughs. There should be a manual oxygen crank at the left wall of the lift. Red handle, old brass plate."
The left wall was painted the same dead hospital cream as the lower chamber, scratched through to steel in long ugly lines. I found the brass plate near my knee. The handle stuck hard the first time I pulled it, then gave with a wet mechanical cough that rattled through the pipe over Marian's face.
Cold air hissed into the cracked mask. Marian's chest rose, caught, then rose again.
"That's it," Siobhan said. "Keep turning it in cycles. Three pulls, pause, three pulls. Don't flood her."
"You make it sound delicate."
"It is delicate. Try that for once."
A rough laugh tore up my throat and went nowhere useful. "I'll consider it after I survive."
Static bit into the line. Behind it, Nora's breath came fast. She was running, and each step hit me lower than the ankle pain.
She had left through the surface corridor alone because Marian needed the cradle and I had given my word.
I had let her go because her eyes had begged me to trust her before her mouth gave the order.
Trust hurt worse than restraint.
"Nora," I said.
"Busy," she shot back, breathless. "Still alive. Don't make that sound."
My mouth pulled despite the blood taste at the back of my tongue. "I didn't make a sound."
"You made your angry breathing sound. Save it for Vale."
The lift lurched, hard. Marian's body rolled against the strap. I dropped the oxygen handle and caught her shoulder before the cradle could tilt. Pain flashed white through my wrist. The old system screamed overhead.
MATERNAL EXIT ROUTE COMPROMISED.
EXTERNAL MERCER OVERRIDE ACTIVE.
SOURCE: SAINT brIGID AMBULANCE BAY.
"He touched the case," Cormac said. Paper rustled under his voice. He was reading, thinking, trying to turn a dead man's machine into law while the rest of us bled inside it. "The external key is pulling authority away from the lift. Declan, do not let the cradle detach from the track."
"Brilliant advice," I gritted out, hauling Marian's cradle back against the rail. "I was about to toss her down the shaft for sport."
"Temper later. The route is asking for confirmation."
The wall screen flickered beside my shoulder.
RED WITNESS MOBILITY REQUIRED.
MATERNAL SOURCE IN TRANSIT.
DAUGHTER ROUTE ABSENT FROM CRADLE.
CONFIRM SUBSTITUTE ESCORT AUTHORITY.
My burned palm pulsed against the rail. The red ring Vale's reader had seared into my skin had gone dark around the edges, but the center burned fresh when the screen changed. The machine knew me. It wanted me to speak myself into a use.
"Cormac," I said. "Words. Now."
"You are not accepting ownership. You are not accepting transfer. You are escort under protective return only. Say your name. Say red witness mobility protects daughter route absence. Say maternal source remains under Nora Brooks's protective duty."
"Shorter."
Maeve cut in, cool as glass over steel. "Tell the machine you're carrying a mother home, not claiming her."
I looked at Marian's face. Nora's face sat inside it in broken places: the mouth, the stubborn line between the brows, the shape grief made when it had been given no chair and still refused to stand outside.
"Red witness Declan Reeve confirms escort under protective return," I said. "I carry Marian Brooks for medical care only. Daughter route Nora Brooks retains protective duty. Transfer denied. Ownership denied. Mercer authority denied."
The lift groaned. The cradle locks snapped once, then reengaged. Marian made a small sound behind the oxygen mask.
ROUTE CONFLICT.
RED WITNESS ESCORT ACCEPTED.
MERCER OVERRIDE CONTESTED.
"Good," Cormac said.
"Good feels like the floor's about to drop."
"In legal terms, that is still good."
Marian's eyelids fluttered. I leaned closer, one hand braced over the strap at her chest, the other dragging the oxygen handle through another cycle.
"Mrs. Brooks," I said. "Stay with me. Nora will kill me if I deliver you in poor condition."
Her lips moved beneath the mask.
I slipped two fingers under the edge and lifted it, just far enough for speech. "Say it again."
"Reeve," she breathed.
My hand tightened on the plastic. "Yes."
Her eyes opened in thin, glassy slits. They were unfocused, but they caught me for a second, and the old chamber seemed to sit between us with every dead choice our fathers had made.
"Martin?"
The name hit the lift like another chain snapping. "Dead."
A tear slid from the corner of her eye into her hair. "He came back."
"So you said."
"Scared man." Her chest hitched. The monitor chirped, fast and weak. "Came back scared. Still came."
My throat closed around an answer I didn't want. Martin Reeve had left blood everywhere he loved. He had made me out of fear, debt, and the back rooms of men richer than him. For years I had carried his name like a weapon I meant to turn on myself last.
Marian Brooks looked at me from a stolen life and gave him one thin scrap of mercy. I hated how badly my body wanted to keep it.
"He didn't come soon enough," I said.
"Men like him rarely do." Her breath dragged. "You came."
I put the mask back before she spent more air on my dead father. "Save your strength for your daughters. Both of them are loud. You'll need stamina."
Her eyes closed, and the corner of her mouth moved. Pain, maybe. A warning, maybe.
The comm opened again with gunfire above us.
"Report," Gabriel said.
His voice had held command through knife rooms, docks, funeral rain, and years that made men harder rather than better. Tonight the rasp under it was new to everyone else. To me, it was old pain dragged under light.
"Stone men at the north ambulance entrance," Maeve said. "Vale sealed the south bay. He has two Mercy guards or old security contractors with him. One down at the first exchange."
"Nora?" I asked.
"Almost there," Nora answered before anyone else could. Her breath scraped through the comm. "I can see the bay doors."
The lift kept rising, too slow. Steel and old brick blurred through the slotted panel above the door. I could smell heat in the motor, oil burning under disinfectant.
"Nora, hold before entering," Gabriel said.
"He started the wake command."
"Hold," Gabriel repeated.
"Gabriel," Isabella said, and there was something in her voice that made even the static lean back. "My sister is looking at the thing that can kill every woman left in that place."
"I know."
"Then don't command her into waiting while Vale finishes."
A pause hit the line. Short. Ugly. Full of marriage and blood and everything Gabriel had spent too many chapters trying to outrun.
"Nora," he said, voice lower, "buy time. Don't spend yourself. Declan is coming."
I looked at the lift door, then at Marian. "I am if this bastard box moves faster."
The cradle shook again. Marian's monitor dipped into a long flat tone for one sick beat before catching.
"Declan," Siobhan snapped.
"She dropped, then caught."
"The lift is interfering with her rhythm. Keep the crank going. If she loses pulse, start compressions where I showed you on guards."
"She is not a guard."
"The heart is still the heart."
The brass handle stuck under my hand. I yanked it harder. Pain tore across my palm, wetting the grip. The oxygen pipe coughed and hissed stronger.
Marian's chest rose again.
"Come on," I said near her ear. "Nora left you with me. Don't embarrass me in front of her."
Above us, Nora's footsteps stopped.
The comm filled with a wide industrial hum, then Vale's voice came through, distorted by distance and bay speakers.
"Nora Brooks. Alone. How loyal of them."
My fingers dug into the rail. "Nora."
"I see him," she said. Her voice had gone smaller and steadier, the way a hand goes steady around a blade. "Black case is open on an ambulance gurney. There are names on the screen. Rows of them."
"Stay by the door," I said.
"I need the console."
"I need a lot of things. Start with living."
Vale laughed. The sound crawled through the overhead speaker in the lift. "Mr. Reeve, still dragging mothers through corridors. How touching. Your father needed two attempts to do the same thing."
Marian's hand jerked under the blanket. Weak fingers found my sleeve and clung.
Red crawled over the lift wall.
MERCER OVERRIDE ESCALATING.
WAKE SEQUENCE PREPARED.
MATERNAL HOLDS: SEVENTEEN ACTIVE.
CONFIRM PURGE IF INTERRUPTED.
Seventeen.
The number punched cold through my stomach.
Seventeen women alive in walls, rooms, cradles, or worse.
Seventeen bodies Vale could wake hard and kill to erase what Thomas had tried to save.
Nora was staring at that from the ambulance bay with blood in her sleeve and her father's ring against her chest.
The lift slammed to a stop.
I almost went down. My bad ankle folded, and only the cradle rail kept me upright. Marian's mask shifted. I fixed it with shaking fingers and looked at the door.