CHAPTER 27 NORA #2
"Mother can speak... from here."
The screen responded before anyone moved.
MATERNAL SOURCE REMOTE CONFIRMATION AVAILABLE
ESTABLISH LIVE CHANNEL AT ANNEX NODE
Cormac exhaled through the comm. "There it is. Nora brings the ring. Declan brings red witness. Marian confirms remotely. That may stop relocation."
"May," Declan said.
"I am a lawyer, not a prophet."
Gabriel looked at Cormac's tablet as one of the men held it up. "How far?"
"Twenty-one minutes with roads cleared," Cormac said. "Longer if police respond to Saint Brigid before we move."
Maeve looked toward the open bay doors. "Police are being delayed by a gas leak report three blocks west. We have a narrow road."
"Stone Medical Transport?" Gabriel asked.
"Two ambulances ready," Maeve said. "One real patient unit for Marian and Isabella to remain under care, one trauma unit for Nora, Declan, and an escort team."
"I am not staying behind," Isabella said.
Gabriel's hand tightened at her waist. "You are pregnant and under heir watch."
"Exactly."
The word cut through the bay. Isabella's eyes were still wet, but something had hardened beneath them, something I knew because grief had built it in both of us.
She was scared. She was furious. She was our father's daughter and our mother's daughter, and the Stone ring on her hand did not erase either.
"Bella," I said.
"They named my child on that screen." Her voice shook, then steadied. "I don't get protected into blindness while my sister walks into the same system."
Gabriel leaned close. "Look at me."
She did. The whole room watched him lower his forehead to hers with a care that made my eyes sting. His voice dropped so low I almost missed the words.
"You will not be blind. You will be guarded. There is a difference, and I will prove it every minute until you believe me."
Her fingers twisted in his shirt. "I need to hear it."
"You will be on the line with Marian. You will hear everything. If the annex route reaches for the child, it reaches through me first."
"And me," Maeve said.
Siobhan finished securing my wrap, then grabbed my chin and turned my face toward her. Her fingers smelled like antiseptic and latex. "You get dizzy, you tell me. You feel cold, you tell me. Your vision spots, your hearing drops, your knees buckle, you tell me before you hit the floor."
"Bossy."
"Correct."
"You are all very warm for people taking children toward another cage," he said.
Declan's body went hard beside me.
I turned before he could. Walking hurt. My legs had the floating weakness that came after too much blood loss and too much terror, but anger gave me bones for the distance. Declan came with me. Siobhan cursed behind us and followed with a medical kit.
Vale knelt in a puddle of rainwater and blood. His perfect hair had fallen across his forehead. He looked smaller on the floor, though the cruelty in his eyes remained clean.
"Say that again," I told him.
His gaze dropped to my wrapped wrist, then to Thomas's ring. "You will take the children under Stone protection. New name. Same ownership."
"Stone protection has doctors, food, beds, and a woman named Siobhan who threatens people into living. Mercy protection had freezers, route codes, and hospital bands in a case. Try a better lie."
His mouth tightened.
I crouched in front of him before Declan could stop me. Pain flared bright enough to blur the floor. Declan's hand caught my elbow, strong and furious, but he let me stay down.
"You used my mother," I said. "You used my father.
You used children, grief, records, ambulances, clinics, every clean word people trust when they are scared.
We are going to the annex. We are taking every living child out with their names still attached.
You will stay alive long enough to watch every route you worshipped turn into testimony. "
Vale's nostrils flared. "You think testimony saves people?"
"I think living people save people. Paper helps when cowards hide behind it."
For the first time, his eyes shifted.
There. A small crack. A route behind his face.
"Who is at the annex?" I asked.
He smiled again, but the smile had to climb. "A nurse. Two drivers. Children who won't remember the ride."
"Name."
"The nurse?"
"All of them."
Declan crouched beside me. His knee hit the wet floor with a sound that made me want to grab him and push him back upright. He ignored his ankle, ignored the blood on his own sleeve, and brought his face level with Vale's.
"Give her names," Declan said.
Vale's gaze flicked between us. "You let your woman ask while you growl beside her?"
"She asks because she wants names. I stand here because if you lie to her, I start with your other hand."
Vale saw too much. "Nurse Albright. Driver Senn. Driver Colby. There are others on call, but those three move tonight."
Cormac's voice sharpened. "Confirmed. Albright appears on Mercy pediatric filings. Senn and Colby under a transport shell. Pulling addresses now."
Maeve pointed at two men. "You heard him. Move."
The men ran.
The case chimed.
TRANSFER WINDOW: SEVENTY-EIGHT MINUTES
Declan helped me stand. The bay tilted hard left, and his arm locked around my waist before my knees went. For one breath, my forehead rested against his chest. He smelled like rain, smoke, blood, and the harsh soap from Stone medical kits.
"Nora," he said, rough enough to undo me.
"I am standing."
"You are leaning with ambition."
"Still counts."
Siobhan shoved between us with a glare that could have cauterized a wound. "Lovely. Terrible timing. Ambulance. Now."
Gabriel was already issuing orders. "Maeve, you hold Saint Brigid and the case.
Cormac, you run annex plans from transport.
Aidan, bring Rina up if she can move. Siobhan, Marian and Isabella stay in the care unit with full guard.
Declan, Nora, you ride trauma unit. Nobody enters that annex until I give the word. "
"Boss," Declan said.
"Nora," Gabriel added, and his gaze fixed on me with that pale Stone force. "You do not spend your life to save my heir from a sentence on a screen."
I looked past him to Isabella. She was watching me with tears on her face and Marian's fingers still in hers. "I am saving children," I said. "Yours is one of them."
Gabriel absorbed that without blinking. Then he nodded once. "Then we save all of them."
The words moved through the bay, not loud, not soft, just final. Stone men straightened. Maeve turned toward the case. Cormac's voice began reciting routes. Siobhan snapped for oxygen and spare blood. Aidan ran toward the lower stair.
The machine chimed again.
GUARDIAN ROUTE TEAM IN MOTION
REMOTE MATERNAL CHANNEL PREPARED
ANNEX NODE AWAITING REVIEW
Declan opened the trauma ambulance doors. Inside, white light hit clean steel, strapped equipment, sealed drawers, a stretcher waiting like an accusation. I hated how fast my body wanted to fold onto it.
"Don't say it," I told him.
"I was going to say you get the comfortable seat."
"Liar."
"Aye."
He lifted me before I could argue. Pain burst through my wrist and arm, and I hissed into his collar. His hold tightened with immediate care, not crushing, not careless, the strength of a man who had carried violence all his life and still knew how to touch broken skin.
"I can walk," I muttered.
Declan set me on the stretcher and stayed close while Siobhan buckled one strap across my hips. I started to protest. Declan leaned down until his forehead almost touched mine.
"For the ride," he said. "So you don't end up on the floor when I brake."
"You are driving?"
"Would you prefer Aidan?"
"Aidan lies about coffee. I don't trust him with turns."
Declan's mouth curved. "Smart woman."
The screen inside the ambulance lit from Cormac's feed.
EAST RIVER MERCY ANNEX
TRANSFER WINDOW: SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES
GUARDIAN REVIEW TEAM EN ROUTE
Declan climbed into the driver's seat. Siobhan slammed a kit beside me and pointed at my face. "You pass out, I am blaming both of you."
"Fair."
"It was not praise."
"I know."
She backed out and slapped the side of the ambulance. The engine growled deeper. Declan looked at me in the rearview mirror, and the whole bay narrowed to his eyes.
"Ready, Brooks?"
My wrapped hand closed around Thomas's ring. Blood spotted the white gauze, bright and stubborn.
"Drive, Reeve."
The ambulance shot into the rain, and the East River route opened ahead of us in red.