Chương 3
Hannah gave a short, humorless laugh.
“Now you believe me.”
“No.”
Evelyn looked at her.
“Now I believe there’s a question.”
That was different.
It mattered.
Hannah sat on the edge of her suitcase.
For several seconds she said nothing.
Then she picked up a wet sock and put it back inside.
It was such an ordinary gesture that Claire made a strange choking sound which became, unexpectedly, a laugh.
Hannah looked at her.
“Sorry.”
“No,” Claire said. “I’m sorry. I just—this is insane.”
“Yes.”
Ryan nodded. “That’s the first thing tonight we all agree on.”
Daniel did not smile.
“Hannah.”
She folded the second sock.
“My brother’s name is Michael.”
Evelyn’s attention sharpened.
“Michael what?”
“Mercer.”
“Age?”
“Thirty-four.”
That matched.
“Medical history?”
Hannah hesitated.
“Why?”
“Because I treated him.”
“You declared him dead.”
“Both can be true.”
Hannah looked at the door.
“He had a motorcycle accident when he was nineteen. Broke his collarbone. Tore up his right knee.”
Evelyn felt the cold settle deeper.
The scars matched.
“Blood type?”
“O positive.”
Also matched.
Daniel sat beside Hannah, leaving several inches between them.
“Why was Michael here?”
Hannah rubbed her hands together.
“He worked here.”
Ryan glanced around at the abandoned machinery.
“Recently?”
“Before it closed.”
“He was fourteen when it closed,” Daniel said.
Hannah looked at him.
“No. The public cable line closed twenty years ago. The maintenance facility operated until six years ago.”
Daniel waited.
She continued.
“Michael was an electrical engineer. Control systems. After college he worked for a contractor that maintained emergency infrastructure up here. Communications, backup power, weather monitoring.”
“And?”
“And they found something.”
Evelyn almost interrupted.
She stopped herself.
Hannah looked at the maintenance door.
“There’s a research facility inside the mountain.”
Ryan said, “Of course there is.”
Claire elbowed him.
“What?”
“You’re not helping.”
“I have accepted that my role tonight is morale.”
Hannah continued.
“It wasn’t secret in the conspiracy sense. It was privately funded. Neurology research. Remote monitoring. Sleep studies. Extreme-environment cognition. The station gave them access to old utility tunnels.”
Evelyn said, “Who funded it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not true.”
Hannah’s jaw tightened.
“Fine. I know a name. I don’t know what it means anymore.”
“Say it.”
“Northstar Behavioral Systems.”
Evelyn knew the name.
Not from medicine.
From the text message she had received at 7:03.
She had searched it before driving north.
Northstar Behavioral Systems had dissolved four years earlier after a civil lawsuit involving unauthorized biometric data collection. The company’s website was gone. Most public records led to shell corporations and dead addresses.
Evelyn had assumed the connection was coincidence.
She was beginning to dislike coincidence.
“What did Michael find?”
Hannah looked toward the door.
“He called it the echo.”
Daniel frowned.
“The what?”
“He never explained it well. I don’t think he could. They were testing a system designed to predict neurological deterioration before physical symptoms appeared. Seizures, stroke, hypoxia. They collected huge amounts of behavioral data—voice, eye movement, heart rhythm, sleep patterns, memory responses.”
“That exists in pieces,” Evelyn said.
“Not like this.”
“What does that mean?”
“It learned people.”
Evelyn waited.
Hannah looked frustrated.
“I know how it sounds.”
“Then use smaller words.”
“It learned how a person would respond. What they’d say. What they’d remember. Eventually it could imitate subjects well enough to continue conversations after they were disconnected.”
Claire said, “Disconnected from what?”
Hannah’s eyes moved to her.
“The system.”
Ryan stopped joking.
Evelyn looked at the door.
“That explains information. It doesn’t explain a dead man walking out of my hospital.”
“No.”
“Or speaking through a steel door.”
“No.”
“Or knowing my father called me Evie.”
“No.”
Hannah’s voice was barely audible now.
“That’s the part Michael was afraid of.”
Thunder rolled through the mountain.
The lights flickered.
The voice behind the door said, “Hannah?”
She flinched.
“Hannah, I’m cold.”
Her eyes filled.
Daniel looked at her.
She whispered, “That’s exactly how he used to say it.”
Evelyn crouched in front of her.
“When did you last see your brother alive?”
“Three years ago.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“What happened?”
Hannah looked at Daniel.
He was waiting.
She seemed to make a decision she had been avoiding for three years.
“I locked him in.”
Daniel stood.
The space between them suddenly felt too small.
“You what?”
“He asked me to.”
“That isn’t what you said five minutes ago.”
“I know.”
“Did you lock your brother behind that door?”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
“I left.”
Daniel stared at her.
“In there?”
“No. Not this room. Deeper inside. There’s another level.”
“Was he hurt?”
“Yes.”
“How badly?”
“I don’t know.”
“You left an injured person underground?”
“He made me.”
“That sentence doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does if you were there.”
Daniel walked away from her.
He stopped beside the edge of the platform, rain blowing across his boots.
Claire said his name softly.
He lifted one hand.
Not now.
Evelyn remained in front of Hannah.
“Why did he ask you to leave?”
“Because he said there were two of him.”
Nobody spoke.
Hannah gave another little laugh, this one closer to breaking.
“There. That face. That’s the face I’ve spent three years trying not to see.”
Evelyn kept her expression neutral.
“Two how?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see two people?”
“No.”
“Did Michael?”
“He said he did.”
“Was he hallucinating?”
“I thought so.”
“Head injury?”
“Yes.”
“Drugs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sleep deprivation?”
“Probably.”
“Carbon monoxide?”
“The detectors were working.”
“Psychiatric history?”
“No.”
“Family history?”
“Not that I know.”
Hannah looked irritated by the questions.
Good.
Irritation was easier to work with than terror.
“What exactly did he say?”
“He said the system had stopped predicting people and started preserving them.”
Evelyn waited.
“That was his word?”
“Yes.”
“Preserving.”
“Yes.”
“And you believed him?”
“No.”
Hannah looked toward the door.
“Not then.”
The voice inside said, “You should have.”
Hannah stood so fast the suitcase tipped over.
Daniel turned.
The voice continued.
“You always did wait too long.”
May you like
Hannah backed away.
Evelyn moved to the door and put her ear near the seam without touching it.
