Chapter 29 #2
I looked at Irish.
His expression became dangerously still.
"How old?" I asked.
"Sixteen."
The woman's breath shook.
"They said the family had been approved."
Marriage.
The records we'd found in Croft House flashed through my mind: authorizations, household assignments, surnames changed beneath religious language polished enough to disguise what was happening.
"Do you know where they took her?"
"Upper residence. Chapel side."
Trigger swore softly.
That wasn't part of our lower-level route.
Irish touched his radio.
"Raze, expand extraction. We may have minors upstairs."
"Copy."
Cipher broke in. "I'm seeing another internal floor plan from the old admin server. Sending now."
My tablet vibrated.
The plan that appeared barely resembled the public version.
The old chapel connected not only to the hidden lower infirmary but to a residential wing divided into small suites with coded labels instead of names.
The suites were labeled H1, H2, H3, and so on, and the meaning became obvious almost immediately: households.
I felt sick.
"This isn't just confinement," I said.
Irish looked over my shoulder.
"No."
"They're staging family assignments."
Trigger's jaw tightened.
"Can we reach the upper wing from here?"
I studied the plan.
The obvious answer was yes.
The safe answer was less certain.
"There should be stairs beyond the old treatment room."
"Camera coverage?"
Cipher answered. "Two in the corridor. I can blind one. Second is isolated."
Hawkeye spoke over comms. "I have angle on exterior power box serving chapel wing."
Irish looked toward Trigger.
Trigger nodded once.
"Hawkeye."
"Copy."
A muted thump carried faintly through the building several seconds later.
The camera indicator on Cipher's display died.
Raze came through the radio. "You know guns have been invented, right?"
Hawkeye answered calmly, "They've also been heard."
Despite everything, Irish's mouth moved.
Barely.
Then we went upstairs.
The chapel residence was quieter than the lower level.
Too quiet.
We found four women first, then an elderly man who had apparently been moved between Order communities for so long that he couldn't remember which surname belonged to him originally.
One room held two sisters in their twenties who had been told one would be sent to England and the other to America because their current household arrangement was being "corrected. "
The language made my anger colder with every door.
Every door introduced another sanitized word—corrected, placed, assigned, transferred—language designed to make coercion sound like administration.
The Order had spent years turning human lives into administrative vocabulary.
Then we found the sixteen-year-old girl.
She sat on the floor beside a narrow bed, fully dressed with a small suitcase packed beside her.
When the door opened, she stood so quickly that the suitcase fell over.
"Is it time?"
Her voice broke.
I stopped.
"No."
She stared at me.
Behind her, a white dress hung from the wardrobe door.
The dress wasn't elaborate or traditionally bridal, but there was still no mistaking what it had been intended to represent.
My stomach turned.
"What's your name?" I asked.
Her eyes moved toward Irish and Trigger before returning to me.
"Grace."
"Grace, your mum is downstairs."
Her entire face changed.
"Mam?"
"She's safe."
Tears appeared immediately.
"They said she agreed."
"She didn't."
The girl covered her mouth.
I stepped closer.
"Do you want to go to her?"
She nodded so hard I thought she might fall.
"Then come with me."
She grabbed the suitcase automatically.
I looked at it.
"You can bring everything you want."
Her fingers tightened around the handle.
"Really?"
"Really."
Irish turned his face away.
I knew why.
Choice had become something none of us needed to explain anymore; it was simply something we offered whenever the Order had spent years taking it away.
Grace followed us downstairs.
Her mother made a sound when she saw her that I knew I would hear again in my sleep. They collided halfway down the corridor, the woman wrapping both arms around her daughter while Grace buried her face against her shoulder and started crying.
Irish stood near the wall watching them.
His expression had gone distant.
I touched his hand.
He looked down.
"Don't," he whispered.
I started to pull away.
His fingers closed around mine.
"Didn't mean that."
I waited.
He looked toward Grace and her mother.
"Just... don't say anything yet."
I understood.
So I stayed beside him without trying to name what the reunion had pulled out of him.
I knew exactly who he was seeing in that reunion: Finn, Maeve, Siobhan, and all the people he had never been given the chance to bring home.
We kept moving.
We found the archive behind the chapel because, naturally, another wall refused to match the building around it.
By then everyone had stopped questioning me when I stared too long at plaster.
"What?" Irish asked.
I ran my hand along the panel beside an old devotional alcove.
"This should be exterior masonry."
"It isn't?"
"No. Sound's wrong."
I knocked lightly.
Hollow.
Trigger looked toward Cipher.
"No electronic lock."
I studied the molding.
"Mechanical."