Chapter 12
The Door Opens from the Other Side
The image on the monitor changed before Claire could reach it.
The future version of her lifted the envelope and turned toward a door behind the camera. The door did not exist in the control room they stood in. Claire knew every wall now: concrete, cable, steel, no exit except the corridor.
Then the steel door opened.
Not from their side.
Something struck the keypad. The lights died. The monitors went black.
Daniel caught Claire by the elbow and pulled her behind the console. Tess crouched beside them. Lucy remained standing in the dark.
“Who is coming?” Claire whispered.
“Someone who thinks the archive is still theirs,” Lucy said.
“You knew this would happen?”
“I knew they would notice the upload.”
The door groaned.
A white beam cut across the floor. Another followed. Men entered the corridor wearing gray maintenance jackets and face coverings. They moved without speaking, each carrying a case.
Daniel raised his weapon.
“County investigator,” he called. “Put your hands where I can see them.”
The first man stopped.
The second threw something onto the floor.
The room filled with a high electrical whine.
Claire's teeth hurt. Tess pressed both hands over her ears. Daniel staggered into the console.
Lucy crossed the room, took the envelope, and ran toward the wall of monitors.
“Where is she going?” Tess shouted.
Claire knew before Lucy reached the panel. The corridor was not the only exit. The concrete wall beside the control room had a seam shaped like a door.
Claire grabbed a brass survey nail from her pocket. She had carried the wrong set from the cabin, but one of the stamped pins was still in her coat.
She drove it into the seam.
The panel opened.
Behind it, a narrow passage sloped toward the lake.
Lucy disappeared inside.
Claire followed.
Daniel caught her sleeve. “We do not know where it goes.”
“Neither do they.”
The men in the gray jackets reached the console. One lifted a case and opened it. Inside, rows of small drives sat in foam.
Evidence.
Or lives.
Claire pulled free of Daniel and entered the passage.
Tess came behind her. Daniel followed last, firing once into the ceiling. The crack of the shot broke the electrical whine and filled the corridor with dust.
They ran.
The passage sloped downward. Water dripped through the ceiling. Claire's shoulder struck stone, and the old pain shot down her arm. Ahead, Lucy's flashlight moved in a hard white rhythm.
“Stop,” Daniel called.
Lucy did not.
The passage ended at a metal hatch. Lucy opened it and climbed into darkness. Claire followed through the opening and found herself beneath Cabin 12.
The room above them was visible through a grid of old service slats. The spare room. The clean oval on the floor. The hidden cameras.
Lucy pushed the envelope through the slats.
“Take it,” she said.
Claire caught it.
On the front, her signature had been printed beneath the name.
“What is inside?”
“The first consent.”
“My consent?”
“Your sister's.”
Lucy looked up at the ceiling. Footsteps moved above them.
“They are in the cabin.”
Daniel raised his flashlight. “How do we get out?”
Lucy pointed at the floor.
There was a second hatch beneath the bed.
“That leads to the lake.”
Claire opened the envelope.
The first page was a clinical consent form. The patient name had been redacted. The witness line carried Mara Rowan's signature.
The second page held a handwritten note.
Claire recognized her own handwriting.
I am asking you to make the copy before I lose the choice.
Above them, a door opened.
Someone stepped into the spare room.
The woman in the cabin spoke through the slats.
“Claire,” she called.
It was not Lucy's voice.
It was Claire's.
“Come upstairs,” the voice said. “I know what you forgot.”