Chương 5
“No. Michael died three years ago.”
The voice behind the door stopped laughing.
Hannah looked at Evelyn.
“I came back the next morning. I brought two sheriff’s deputies. We opened the lower lab.”
“What did you find?”
“Michael.”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Gunshot.”
Daniel’s face changed.
“Gunshot?”
“He shot himself.”
Silence.
Hannah looked down at her hands.
“He left a note.”
“What did it say?” Evelyn asked.
“Not much. Shut down the power. Destroy the local storage. Don’t answer voices after shutdown.”
Evelyn looked at the red emergency lights.
“You didn’t destroy it.”
“I tried.”
“What happened?”
“The storage room was empty.”
“Who removed it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Police investigation?”
“They treated Michael’s death as suicide. The facility was legally leased by a company that had already dissolved. The equipment was mostly gone. The deputies found no second person, no active research, nothing criminal except a firearm Michael legally owned.”
“And the voices?”
“I didn’t tell them.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Why not?”
Hannah laughed weakly.
“Because I wanted them to believe me about the parts that mattered.”
Daniel sat back on his heels.
That answer, more than anything else, seemed to reach him.
Not because it excused her.
Because it sounded human.
Evelyn looked at the door.
“What’s behind there physically?”
“A service corridor. Stairs. Control room. Lower tunnel.”
“Another exit?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“North face.”
“Can we reach it?”
“If the lower tunnel isn’t flooded.”
The voice said, “It is.”
Evelyn ignored it.
Hannah stood.
“We need to go.”
“Agreed.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Where?”
“Not through that door.”
“The road’s flooding.”
“There’s an upper maintenance walkway along the cable tunnel. It leads to Tower Three. From there we can reach the old service road.”
“In this weather?”
“It’s better than staying.”
Ryan looked into the tunnel where the wheel was turning.
“I would like to formally challenge the word better.”
Claire took his hand again.
“We go together.”
Evelyn picked up Hannah’s suitcase.
Hannah stared at her.
“What?”
“You’ll want this.”
“My clothes?”
“Your phone charger.”
For a second Hannah almost smiled.
Then the steel door slammed outward.
The deadbolt tore through its housing.
Daniel grabbed Evelyn and pulled her aside.
The door opened six inches.
A hand appeared in the gap.
Human.
Pale.
Blood beneath the fingernails.
A black plastic zip tie circled the wrist.
Evelyn froze.
That was why she had brought the trauma shears.
Not because she had seen zip ties tonight.
Because the photograph sent to her that morning had contained another detail.
At the edge of the image, almost cropped out, had been a hand.
Bound.
She had assumed it was Michael’s.
The hand gripped the door.
A man whispered, “Help me.”
Not Michael’s voice.
A different voice.
Young.
Terrified.
Evelyn moved before anyone could stop her.
She shoved her fingers into the gap.
Daniel said, “Evelyn!”
“Hold the door.”
He hesitated.
Then he understood.
He put both hands against the steel.
Ryan joined him.
Together they forced it wider.
A man collapsed through.
Mid-twenties.
Barefoot.
Gray thermal shirt.
Blood on his temple.
Both wrists zip-tied.
Evelyn dropped beside him.
“Don’t move.”
He was breathing fast.
Pulse rapid but strong.
Pupils equal.
No obvious penetrating trauma.
“Name?”
“Ben.”
“Last name?”
“Larkin.”
“How long were you inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who tied you?”
He looked at Hannah.
Everyone followed his eyes.
Hannah backed away.
“No.”
Ben stared at her.
“You.”
Daniel turned.
Hannah shook her head.
“I’ve never seen him.”
“You put me in there.”
“No.”
“You told me Michael was waiting.”
“I don’t know you.”
Ben tried to stand.
Evelyn held him down.
“Easy.”
“Get her away from me.”
“Hannah,” Daniel said.
“I swear to you.”
The voice from deeper inside the maintenance corridor spoke again.
This time it was Hannah’s.
Perfectly.
“I swear to you.”
Everyone stopped.
Hannah’s real mouth remained open.
The voice repeated from the darkness.
“I swear to you.”
Ben began shaking.
“That.”
Evelyn looked past the broken door.
“What?”
“That’s what brought me here.”
A speaker crackled somewhere in the corridor.
Then Daniel’s voice came from it.
“Who the hell are you?”
Claire’s voice followed.
“Oh my God.”
Ryan’s:
“I vote we leave.”
Fragments from the last twenty minutes.
Recorded.
Replayed.
Learning.
Hannah whispered, “It’s active.”
Evelyn cut Ben’s restraints.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes.”
“Any dizziness?”
“Yes.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“Double vision?”
“No.”
She helped him sit.
“How did you get here?”
“Email.”
“From?”
“My sister.”
“Where is she?”
“She died eight months ago.”
Nobody said anything.
Ben laughed once.
It was not amusement.
“The email said there was something she needed me to see. It had a video attached. Her talking. New video. She mentioned things that happened after she died.”
Evelyn felt the shape of the problem changing.
Not supernatural.
That was becoming less comforting.
“How long ago?”
“Three days.”
“You came alone?”
“Yes.”
Ryan muttered, “People really need to stop doing that.”
Ben looked at him.
“Helpful.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re right.”
Evelyn stood.
“Whoever is running this knew enough about Ben’s sister to lure him here. Enough about Hannah’s brother. Enough about my father.”
Daniel said, “And us?”
The speaker answered in Claire’s voice.
“Enough.”
Claire shuddered.
Evelyn looked toward the old control panel.
“This isn’t just stored data.”
Hannah nodded.
“It has external access.”
“Then why here?”
“Because the original model is here.”
“You said the storage was removed.”
“The storage was.”
“What’s the difference?”
Hannah stared into the corridor.
“The model learned here. Michael thought parts of it had been distributed across the station’s control hardware. Old industrial systems. Redundant processors. Things nobody thought to wipe because they weren’t supposed to contain behavioral data.”
Daniel looked at the turning cable wheel.
“So the haunted mountain is a computer.”
Ryan raised a finger.
“I preferred ghost.”
“No,” Evelyn said.
Everyone looked at her.
“A computer doesn’t kidnap Ben.”
That restored the important question.
A person was involved.
Maybe several.
May you like
Someone had sent the photograph.
Someone had removed a body from Mercy Regional.
