The glowing blue light of the monitor cast long, skeletal shadows across the concrete walls of the underground chamber as the video continued to play. On screen, a younger Evelyn leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to the infant’s forehead before handing the bundle over to the man standing beside her—the man I had called Dad all my life.
«You’ve secured the asset,» Evelyn’s recorded voice whispered through the room’s hidden speakers, her tone terrifyingly detached. «Raise her outside the network. Let her believe she’s ordinary until the baseline is fully stable.»
«And if she remembers?» my father’s voice asked on the tape, echoing the same dry cadence I had heard a thousand times at our kitchen table.
«Then the security protocol activates,» Evelyn replied on screen, turning her head directly toward the camera lens as if looking right through the decades at me. «And she comes home.»
A sharp, metallic clatter echoed from the library behind me.
My breath caught. I spun around, tearing my eyes away from the screen just in time to see the heavy hydraulic door of the secret room begin to slide inward, slowly cutting off my only escape. Someone—or something—was overriding the system from the outside.
«Maya!» Julian’s voice strained through the narrowing gap, harsh and desperate. «Get away from the console! The house is hooked into the regional grid—they didn’t just lock the gas lines, they initiated a total perimeter lockdown!»
«Julian, look at the screen!» I screamed back, lunging toward the doorway, but my bare foot slipped on the smooth concrete floor.
Before I could reach the threshold, the heavy steel panel slammed shut with a definitive, bone-jarring thud. The hydraulic locks engaged, one by one, sealing me inside the bunker with a series of heavy mechanical thumps. The digital keypad on the interior wall flickered twice and then went completely dark.
I threw my weight against the solid steel, pounding my fists until my knuckles split against the metal. «Open the door! Julian!»
No answer. Only the low, ominous hum of the server racks behind me booting up into full operation.
Slowly, I turned back toward the glass desk. The monitor had refreshed, clearing away the old hospital footage. A brand-new interface now pulsed in the center of the screen, displaying a live high-definition video feed from the nursery upstairs.
The room was empty.
The federal agents were gone. The shattered ceramic and Julian’s blood had vanished from the hardwood floorboards, replaced by a pristine, undisturbed expanse of polished oak. The baby’s crib was there, but the lavender fleece blanket lay folded neatly over the railing.
And sitting right in the middle of the empty crib was a second ticking timer.
This one didn’t have three minutes left.
The red LED numbers were locked at 00:00, flashing a steady, silent warning as the feed suddenly cut to static, leaving me alone in the dark.