46. Clay
Clay
Nobody moves.
Nobody breathes.
That tiny voice echoes through the tunnel again.
“Please…”
Weak.
Terrified.
Real.
Hannah grabs my arm so hard her nails dig through my sleeve.
“Oh my God.”
Russ immediately signals silence with two fingers.
All lights stay off.
The only illumination now comes from the distant glow of Sentinel flashlights moving somewhere behind us through the underground rail system.
Too close.
Way too close.
But none of us are focused on them anymore.
Because there’s a child down here.
Now.
Not twenty years ago.
Now.
Gabriel slowly steps forward into the darkness.
“Honey?” he calls quietly in accented Romanian.
“You’re okay. We’re not going to hurt you.”
No response.
Then—
metal rattles softly farther ahead.
Like chains moving.
My entire body goes cold.
Mason mutters,
“Jesus…”
I’m sure he’s remembering too.
Hannah’s breathing turns ragged beside me.
“They never shut it down.”
Her whisper barely exists.
And somehow that’s worse than if she screamed it.
The tunnel suddenly feels endless around us.
Ancient.
Rotting.
Alive.
Russ motions sharply.
Lucas and Mason move rear guard while the rest of us push deeper underground toward the voice.
The air changes the farther we go.
Warmer.
Stale.
Generator heat.
Oh hell no.
Somebody’s operating something down here.
Recently.
Water splashes beneath our boots as we move carefully past abandoned rail carts and rusted transport cages shoved against the walls.
Human-sized.
My jaw tightens violently.
Hannah notices.
Her hand slips into mine without warning.
Not romantic.
Instinct.
Like she suddenly needs proof somebody solid exists beside her.
I hold on immediately.
Ahead—
Gabriel freezes.
Then slowly lifts a hand.
Everybody stops.
Light spills faintly beneath another steel door farther down the tunnel.
Fresh light.
Generator-powered.
Not abandoned.
Russ moves beside Gabriel carefully.
“You think this is active?”
Gabriel’s expression darkens.
“I think we found another facility.”
My stomach drops.
Because that means Wu wasn’t evacuating children.
He was relocating them.
The child’s voice comes again.
Closer now.
Crying softly.
“I don’t want the medicine…”
Hannah physically flinches beside me.
Overlap hits immediately.
I feel it happen before she even speaks.
Her fingers tighten painfully around mine.
“No…”
Her pupils dilate.
Breathing changing again.
She’s slipping backward into memory.
“Hannah,” I murmur quietly.
Too late.
She’s seeing something else now.
Her voice turns distant.
“There were blue rooms too.”
Everybody looks at her sharply.
Not now.
Not during this.
But we don’t control when the memories come anymore.
Gabriel steps closer carefully.
“What blue rooms?”
Hannah stares blindly toward the lit doorway.
“Recovery conditioning.”
Ice slides down my spine.
Oh God.
“There were different colors,” she whispers.
“Red for punishment.”
“White for testing.”
“Blue for memory alteration.”
Russ swears softly.
Sentinel wasn’t a prison.
It was a system.
Organized.
Structured.
Refined over decades.
Hannah’s eyes suddenly widen in horror.
“They used music.”
The words echo strangely underground.
“What?” Lucas asks quietly.
“To erase things.”
Tears spill down her cheeks now.
“They’d hurt us… then play the same songs during sedation until eventually the memories stopped feeling real.”
My chest tightens so violently it hurts.
That’s why she freezes when certain melodies play.
Why music keeps triggering emotional fractures she doesn’t understand.
Jesus Christ.
Gabriel looks sick now too.
“Wu refined the process,” he says quietly.
“But it started long before him.”
Hannah stares at the glowing light beneath the steel door.
“They’re still doing it.”
A scream suddenly erupts from somewhere beyond the walls.
Child.
Young.
Raw terror.
Everything explodes into motion.
Russ raises his rifle instantly.
“We breach.”
No hesitation now.
No debate.
Lucas moves left.
Mason right.
Gabriel draws his sidearm.
I pull Hannah behind me automatically.
Her hand clamps onto my jacket.
“Clay—”
“You stay behind me.”
Her eyes flash immediately.
“I am NOT staying behind while children are in there.”
Wrong thing to say to me right now.
Because my protective instincts are already hanging by a thread.
“Hannah—”
“No.”
Her voice shakes.
But not from fear anymore.
From fury.
“They did this to us.”
“They’re still doing it.”
“I’m not hiding.”
For one dangerous second—all I can see is her kneeling beside Avery in that tunnel.
Covered in blood.
Still fighting.
God help me, I love this woman. I will do whatever it takes to keep her safe.
The realization hits so hard it nearly knocks the air from my lungs.
Not attraction.
Not attachment.
Love. A love so powerful it takes my breath away.
And the timing couldn’t possibly be worse.
Russ counts silently with his fingers.
Three.
Two.
One—
Mason kicks the steel door inward so hard the hinges scream.
Weapons come up instantly.
“MOVE!”
We flood the room—
—and every single person freezes.
Because it isn’t a lab.
It’s a nursery.
Tiny beds line the underground chamber.
Children.
At least twenty of them.
Some sleeping.
Some terrified.
Some hooked to IVs.
And standing in the center of the room beside a rolling medical cart—
is a woman in a white coat holding a syringe.
She turns slowly toward us.
Calm.
Almost curious.
Then her eyes land directly on Hannah.
And she smiles.
“Oh,” she says softly.
“Subject Thirteen survived.”