Chapter 12 - UNIT TWELVE
The countdown above the control room dropped from sixty to fifty-nine.
Gas curled from the floor vents in thin white ribbons.
The children behind the observation windows began coughing.
Lily stopped nursing and pulled away from me with a frightened cry.
I covered her nose and mouth loosely with the edge of my scrub top.
"It smells sweet," Naomi said.
She crouched near a vent without breathing deeply.
"Likely an anesthetic mixture."
"At this concentration, the infants will lose consciousness first."
Bianca slammed both palms against Dante's glass.
"Press his button."
"Save him."
Lorenzo stood before the illuminated controls.
Each red button carried a unit number.
Only one could be selected.
A warning on the screen read SINGLE-CHAMBER PURGE.
The system had been designed to force a choice and record it.
Mercer did not merely want children dead.
He wanted proof that frightened parents would abandon everyone else's child to save their own.
That proof would become another weapon.
He could show Bianca that Lorenzo chose Leo over Dante.
He could show me that Lorenzo chose his family over Lily.
He could show Lorenzo that love was only selfishness wearing a noble face.
"Forty-five seconds," Naomi said.
Lorenzo looked at me.
"Which room is Lily registered under?"
"None."
"She is with me."
"Then I choose the nursery with the youngest children."
"No," I said.
Bianca turned on me.
"My son has been trapped here for five years."
"He will not die while you calculate morality."
"If we press any of those buttons, Mercer wins."
"Mercer is not coughing."
"The children are."
She lunged toward Unit Seven's control.
Lorenzo caught her wrist.
"Wait."
"For what?"
"A miracle?"
"Mara found one in the nursery," he said.
"Give her ten seconds."
I stared at the panel.
Unit Twelve's button sat slightly apart from the others.
Its indicator remained dark.
The room behind the Unit Twelve window was empty except for a transport bassinet and a steel cabinet.
The phrase from the ledger returned to me.
Unit Twelve moves.
Celeste had said it was a mobile neonatal vehicle.
Yet this shelter also called one chamber Unit Twelve.
Mercer's network reused the same code for transport, records, and temporary placement.
Unit Twelve was not one child.
It was the system connecting all of them.
"Naomi, look at the air lines."
Copper pipes ran above the buttons and disappeared into the ceiling.
Each unit had a narrow branch.
Unit Twelve had the largest pipe.
It fed the central manifold.
"That isn't a single chamber purge," Naomi said.
"It is the main exhaust."
"Pressing it could clear every room."
"Or fill every room faster," Bianca replied.
The countdown reached twenty-eight.
Children cried behind the glass.
The smallest infant lay still in a nurse's arms inside Unit Three.
The nurse pounded on the window, pointing toward the controls.
She had been imprisoned with them.
She knew we had seconds.
Lorenzo placed his hand over Unit Twelve.
"Mara."
"Do it."
"Are you certain?"
"No."
I held Lily tighter.
"But Mercer expects us to choose a child."
"The only answer he did not offer is all of them."
Lorenzo pressed the Unit Twelve button.
The screen flashed black.
For one terrifying second, the gas hiss grew louder.
Bianca screamed at him.
Then industrial fans roared above us.
The white vapor reversed direction and vanished into the vents.
Fresh air blasted through ceiling grilles.
The countdown stopped at nineteen.
Every chamber door unlocked at once.
The nurse in Unit Three lifted the unconscious infant and ran into the control room.
Naomi took the baby, placed him on the floor, and began assisted breathing.
Older children stumbled through the doors.
Some cried.
Some remained completely silent.
Silence was the more frightening response.
It meant fear had become ordinary.
Bianca entered Unit Seven.
She stopped several feet from Dante.
The boy held the wooden horse against his chest.
"You said you are my mother," he said.
"I am."
"Dr. Mercer said mothers leave."
Bianca lowered herself to her knees despite the wound in her shoulder.
"I did not know where you were."
"You signed a paper."
"I was told you died."
"He showed me."
Dante pointed toward a small monitor on the wall.
A video began playing.
It showed Bianca five years earlier in a hospital bed.
She signed a document while a nurse held her wrist steady.
Mercer's voice asked whether she understood she was surrendering the child.
Bianca's speech was slurred.
"Yes," the woman on the video murmured.
"Take him away."
The recording ended.
Dante looked at her.
"You told them to take me."
Bianca covered her mouth.
"I thought I was signing permission for surgery."
"I did not know."
"That is what they do," I said from the doorway.
"They turn the worst minute of your life into the only story your child ever hears."
Dante studied me.
Lily's head rested beneath my chin.
"Is that your baby?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Did they take her too?"
"They did."
"Did you find her?"
I kissed Lily's hair.
"I found her."
"Then maybe she found me," Bianca whispered.
Dante did not run into his mother's arms.
Five years of abandonment could not be repaired with one explanation.
He allowed her to sit beside him.
That was all he could give.
It was enough to keep Bianca breathing.
Lorenzo opened the yellow weapon box using a key from the control cabinet.
He handed Bianca's pistol to Matteo, who had reached the shelter through a maintenance tunnel with Enzo and Harper's agents.
Enzo looked over the rescued children and swore quietly.
"We have twenty-three minors," Harper reported.
"Ages two months to eleven years."
"Three adult caregivers are locked in the rear ward."
"Two say they were forced to work here."
"The third is missing."
"Mercer," Lorenzo said.
"He used the service tunnel," Enzo replied.
"A car left the south loading bay four minutes ago."
"Road cameras?"
"Disabled."
"Of course."
Naomi stabilized the infant from Unit Three.
A pulse returned.
She looked up at us.
"We need ambulances, oxygen, pediatric teams, and a way to identify these children without alerting Mercer's contacts."
Harper used the shelter's landline to request a federal disaster response under sealed authority.
Matteo began photographing each child's bracelet.
Many carried numbers instead of names.
One older girl refused to let anyone approach until I sat on the floor several feet away.
Her hair had been shaved close to her scalp.
A faded mark on her wrist showed where a hospital bracelet had once been.
"My name is Mara," I said.
"This is Lily."
The girl watched Lily sleep.
"Babies don't stay," she said.
"They are taken upstairs."
"Where is upstairs?"
"Different places."
"Did you hear any names?"
She looked toward the control room camera.
Harper had already disabled it.
Still, the child whispered.
"The doctor calls the woman Mother Red."
"She has red hair?"
"Sometimes."
"She changes it."
"What does Mother Red do?"
"She teaches us our new stories."
"She tells us which parents died and which parents did not want us."
A chill moved through me.
Mercer handled medicine and records.
Bianca handled money and trust documents.
Someone else rewrote the children's identities and prepared them to accept new families.
"Did Mother Red take Lily from the hospital room?" I asked.
The girl nodded.
"She brought the baby down here."
"Then the widow took her."
"Where did Mother Red go?"
"Through the blue door."
She pointed toward Unit Twelve.
Inside, the transport bassinet rested beside the steel cabinet.
Lorenzo opened the cabinet.
It contained wigs, hospital uniforms, false identification badges, and passports bearing different names but the same woman's face.
The woman was around fifty, with delicate features and pale green eyes.
One passport identified her as Evelyn Ward.
Celeste Ward's mother.
Another identified her as Dr. Eleanor Mercer.
Adrian Mercer's wife.
A third carried the name Helena Rossi.
Lorenzo picked up that passport.
"Helena was my father's first wife."
"She died before I was born."
Matteo examined the photograph.
"No."
His voice became almost inaudible.
"Salvatore told everyone she died."
"He had her committed after she discovered his hospital accounts."
"I saw her once when I was a boy."
"This is Helena."
The girl beside me began trembling.
"Mother Red said the doctor makes mistakes."
"She said she never does."
A phone rang inside the cabinet.
Lorenzo answered.
A woman's voice spoke without distortion.
"You saved the children."
"How sentimental."
"Helena," Lorenzo said.
"Is that what they call me now?"
She laughed softly.
"Your father called me many things before he erased me."
"Where is Mercer?"
"Running."
"He was useful, but he has become emotional."
"You tried to kill Leo."
"No."
"Adrian tried to kill Leo."
"I only needed the child weak enough to reveal which servant would break your rules."
Her words turned my stomach cold.
"You sent me to the mansion," I said.
"Yes, Mara."
"You were always the most interesting piece."
"A grieving mother with milk and nothing left to protect."
"I knew you would hear Leo."
"I knew you would disobey."
"Why?"
"Because I needed Lorenzo to trust someone outside his bloodline."
The woman paused.
"Now that he does, you can destroy him for me."
The call ended.
A printer inside the cabinet came to life.
One page slid into the tray.
It was a photograph taken minutes earlier in the hospital neonatal unit.
Leo slept inside a secured room.
A red-haired woman stood beside his crib.
Enzo grabbed his radio.
"Mercy lockdown."
"Now."
Static answered.
May you like
At the bottom of the photograph, Helena had written six words.
YOU SAVED TWENTY-THREE AND FORGOT ONE.
