第8章

Sarah hid an access card inside a medication cup.

"One use, two doors at most." She spoke with her back to the camera. "The inspector hasn't reached this site yet. At midnight, every original record gets wiped."

I tucked the card under my tongue and told Ward, "I'll sign."

She stopped.

"But before I sign, I need to confirm all six children are still alive."

Ward needed my signature. She agreed.

When a guard wheeled me past the first door, I let my body slide from the chair on purpose. While they bent down, I cut the wrist restraint, swiped the pass, and bolted into the corridor.

Every breath drove a spike through my ribs. I followed the seven-beat tapping and crashed through the second door.

There wasn't one operating table inside.

There were six.

Finn was already intubated, a core extraction needle suspended above his chest. Asher had been wheeled out of a cryogenic box, his lips blue. Blake, Caleb, Dylan, and Eli were chained to the other four tables with silver shackles.

Ward had never planned to test only Finn.

She intended to complete deep tissue sampling on all six before midnight, load them into separate vehicles, and destroy every original record.

I threw myself at Finn's bed, ripped out the IV, and covered his chest with my body.

"Mama!"

A suppression baton cracked across my back.

My vision went black. My ribs felt as if they'd been shattered. A guard grabbed my legs, but I locked my arms around the metal frame and called each child's name, over and over.

"Asher, look at me. Blake, don't bite. Caleb, listen to my heartbeat. Dylan, Eli, hold on to each other. Finn, don't fall asleep."

They pried my fingers loose one by one.

Ward dragged me into a thirty-two-degree cold room next to the operating theater. Through the one-way glass, I could see all six tables. I could hear the countdown and the children crying.

"Sign, and the procedures stop." She activated the intercom.

I was too cold to hold a pen.

With a bleeding fingertip, I wrote on the glass, one stroke at a time:

I do not consent.

Ward read it from the other side, then ordered someone to wipe it off. Sarah stepped in front of the cleaning staff, insisting it was an explicit refusal and had to be entered into the record. Ward confiscated her badge on the spot and had security drag her out of the surgical area.

"These children's blood could save lives," Ward said over the intercom. "You don't even have a job or a place to live. What gives you the right to refuse treatment for them?"

"They're not your medicine." I pressed my bloody hand against the glass again. "Without my consent and theirs, you cannot touch them."

Sarah, outside the door, used her last remaining login to sync this exchange to a backup server without the guards noticing.

"Lower the needles," Ward said.

The instruments powered up.

On the other side of the glass, Asher realized my eyes were closing. He stopped fighting the restraints and instead tapped the bed rail, using the code we'd practiced for three years to wake his brothers.

Caleb suddenly heard my heart rate fall from forty beats per minute to twenty-eight.

He tapped the rail once. Asher joined in immediately. Then Blake, Dylan, Eli, and finally, weakest of all, Finn.

One, two, three. Pause. Then four.

Our family's seven-beat code.

The six children bit through the silver alloy bands and channeled all their remaining body heat into Finn. Asher then bit open his own palm and drew a black-gold symbol on the floor, a mark no one had ever taught him.

"Dad," six small voices called out at once. "Find us."

Caleb looked through the glass toward me and added the last words through tears.

"Mama's dying."

The suppressors overloaded for seven seconds. The distress signal slipped through into the Serpent network.

Hundreds of miles away, the mate mark on Cassian's palm cracked open.

He heard six children's heartbeats at the same time, and he heard mine growing weaker. The signal came from underground in Blackpine. Of the three candidate addresses, only one remained.

"Lock down every road, airport, server, and underground exit in Blackpine." Cassian stood. "Medical team goes in first. No evidence is to be destroyed."

Ward discovered the system had been locked from outside and barked, "Extract now!"

The core needle descended toward Finn's chest.

The cold room's heart monitor let out one long, unbroken tone.

One second before the needle touched skin, the blast door was ripped from its frame.

Smoke billowed. Alarms screamed.

A tall man stood behind the shattered door. Dark hair, golden slit pupils, six offspring marks burning on his palm.

He strode past the six operating tables and his gaze landed on me, covered in blood.

The man who had disappeared three years ago without so much as a goodbye had finally come.

"Get your hands off my family."