Chương 3
She hated the question because she hated her answer.
“My body does.”
Nobody spoke.
She moved down the corridor.
At the end was a storage recess containing firefighting equipment, two coiled hoses, and a maintenance cabinet. Claire opened the cabinet and removed three folded thermal blankets.
Behind them was a steel plate.
Willis stared.
“That’s not on the compartment diagram.”
Claire put her palm against the lower edge.
Nothing happened.
She moved her hand six inches right.
The plate released with a muted click.
A narrow service passage opened behind it.
Serrano looked at her.
Claire said, “I know.”
Jonathan went in first.
She grabbed his sleeve.
“No.”
He looked down at her hand.
“You don’t know what’s in there.”
“My son.”
“Maybe.”
The word hurt him more than she intended.
She released his sleeve.
“I go first.”
“You’re injured.”
“And I know the route.”
“You said you don’t remember it.”
“I didn’t say that was comforting.”
Serrano intervened.
“I go first. Captain behind me. Admiral behind her. Willis takes rear.”
For once nobody argued.
The passage smelled of warm wiring and disinfectant.
That combination made Claire’s stomach tighten.
She walked with one hand brushing the wall.
Twenty feet in, she found a number scratched near the deck.
4.
Farther down.
5.
Then 6.
At the corner she stopped.
There was no 7.
Only a blank door.
Serrano tried the handle.
Locked.
Claire reached toward the wall beside it.
Again, her hand knew where to go.
She pressed two fingers to an indentation almost invisible beneath the paint.
The lock released.
Jonathan inhaled.
Serrano opened the door.
Cell Seven was empty.
The room was six feet wide and perhaps eight deep. A thin mattress lay on a built-in platform. Plastic restraints were fixed to one wall. A stainless toilet stood behind a partial divider.
On the mattress was a paper cup.
Water still trembled inside it.
Claire moved past Serrano.
“Daniel?”
Her voice sounded small.
She hated that too.
Jonathan touched the mattress.
It was still warm.
Serrano crouched beside the restraints.
“Used recently.”
Willis pointed toward the floor.
A drag mark crossed a patch of moisture.
Jonathan stood.
“Where did they take him?”
Claire looked at the cup.
There was a split along one side where someone had crushed it.
On the wall above the mattress, nearly invisible under red light, someone had made four short lines with a fingernail or a piece of metal.
Three vertical.
One diagonal.
Claire stepped closer.
Her breath changed.
A memory came.
Not Cell Seven.
Another room.
Daniel sitting on the floor opposite her.
You keep counting backward.
It helps.
It doesn’t. You get angry when you reach four.
Why four?
I was hoping you knew.
The image disappeared.
Claire gripped the edge of the platform.
Jonathan said her name.
She turned.
“Daniel knew something about me.”
“You said he remembered you.”
“He said we’d been here before.”
Jonathan’s face went still.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
The ship’s normal lighting flickered once but did not return.
Somewhere in the service passage, metal struck metal.
Serrano turned.
“Willis.”
The younger MP checked the rear.
“Clear.”
A speaker above the cell door crackled.
Kane’s voice filled the room.
“Admiral, you need to come back topside.”
Jonathan looked up.
“Kane.”
“Captain Voss has suffered neurological trauma. Everything she tells you may feel convincing because she believes it.”
Claire stared at the speaker.
Kane continued.
“She disappeared during a classified field recovery operation thirty-six hours ago. She assaulted two personnel, removed protected material, and escaped medical supervision.”
Claire looked at Serrano.
“Did he just say medical?”
Serrano nodded slightly.
Jonathan said, “Where is Daniel?”
Silence.
Then Kane answered, “Your son died fourteen months ago.”
Jonathan walked beneath the speaker.
“Then explain his coin.”
“I can’t explain what I haven’t examined.”
“And the recording?”
“Voice synthesis.”
Claire laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
Kane sounded irritated for the first time.
“Captain Voss, you know that technology exists.”
“I know you’re standing somewhere with power while the rest of us are in emergency lighting.”
Serrano looked up.
That mattered.
Jonathan caught it too.
“Where are you, Kane?”
No answer.
Claire’s gaze moved around the cell.
Vent.
Light.
Restraints.
Cup.
No cameras visible.
But cameras rarely needed to be visible.
She looked at the plastic restraints again.
One strap was cut.
Not released.
Cut.
She crouched.
There was a tiny black thread trapped near the buckle.
Daniel had been wearing dark blue medical trousers.
The thread was not his.
Claire pinched it between her fingers.
Serrano leaned over.
“Uniform fabric.”
“Glove,” Claire said.
Kane wore black gloves.
So did half the security detail.
It proved nothing.
But beneath the restraint bracket was something else.
A small smear of silver-gray.
Claire rubbed it.
Graphite.
Her memory opened.
Daniel’s hand.
A pencil.
No paper.
Writing on the underside of something while somebody walked past.
Claire dropped to one knee and looked under the mattress platform.
Numbers had been written there.
Not words.
A sequence.
17-04-6.
17-04-6.
17-04-6.
Repeated nine times.
Jonathan crouched awkwardly beside her.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Serrano photographed it with his phone, then frowned when the device showed no network.
“Could be a compartment number.”
Willis shook his head. “Not in this area.”
Claire whispered the sequence.
Seventeen.
Four.
Six.
A bell rang somewhere in her head.
Not a memory.
Training.
Shipboard frames.
Decks.
Sections.
“Frame seventeen,” she said.
Jonathan looked at her.
“Deck four. Compartment six.”
Serrano stood.
“That puts us aft.”
“Near aviation support,” Willis said.
The helicopter.
Claire was already moving.
They did not reach the service passage before the door slammed shut behind them.
The lock engaged.
Willis hit the release.
Nothing.
Serrano tried his radio.
Static.
Jonathan looked around the cell.
“Kane is containing us.”
Claire went to the vent.
“Serrano, give me your flashlight.”
He handed it over.
She shined it through the grate.
“Captain?”
“There’s wiring behind this wall.”
May you like
“That doesn’t help us.”
“It helped me before.”
