Chapter 14 - THE CHILDREN OF ASHFORD
Z
Daniel approached the glass.
“My mother was Subject 79.”
Cole shook his head. “Your mother carried the mutation. You perfected it.”
“Perfected what?”
“A cellular repair mechanism. Your blood regenerates damaged tissue at an abnormal rate.”
Daniel almost laughed. “I have scars.”
“Regeneration is not immortality. Your body simply recovers more efficiently than most. You survived childhood illnesses, physical trauma, and exposures that should have produced lasting damage.”
Maria looked at the scar on Daniel’s shoulder where the chandelier glass had cut him. It had healed faster than doctors expected.
“That proves nothing,” Daniel said.
“Your father proved it repeatedly.”
“Charles?”
“William.”
Cole touched a control panel. The screen displayed laboratory footage dated thirty years earlier. A young Daniel sat in a hospital bed while technicians drew blood.
He remembered the room.
His father—Charles—had told him he was being treated for recurring fevers. His mother had cried outside the door.
“You tested me as a child.”
“Voss did. Charles permitted it in exchange for control of the patents.”
Daniel’s stomach turned.
“The Hale fortune,” he said.
“Was built partly on therapies developed from your blood.”
Maria stared at him. “That is why Voss said he gave you an empire.”
Cole illuminated the wall of children’s photographs.
“Continuance attempted to reproduce your genetic profile. Most embryos failed. Some children were born with serious defects. Seven survived.”
“Where are they?” Maria asked.
“Two died. Three disappeared after the program closed. Lily is one. The final child is here.”
A door opened behind the laboratory.
A teenage girl stepped into the light.
She could not have been older than sixteen. Her hair was dark, but her eyes were identical to Daniel’s.
“My name is Grace,” she said.
Daniel could not speak.
Grace looked at Maria. “Is Lily safe?”
“How do you know her name?”
“I watched Tomas hide her records.”
Maria crossed the room before Daniel could stop her. “You knew my husband?”
“He helped me escape.”
Grace explained that she had been raised inside private medical facilities under the supervision of Cole and Ward. Tomas discovered her during the Northstar systems audit because patient expenses had been disguised as collection losses.
He copied the files.
He also learned that Lily had been created through the same program.
“Tomas tried to remove both of us,” Grace said. “He got me out first. Cole promised to help him take Lily.”
Maria turned toward the scientist. “You betrayed him.”
Cole lowered his eyes. “Voss threatened my family.”
“Everyone had a reason,” she said. “My husband is still dead.”
“He asked me to send the letter if anything happened to him.”
“You waited a year.”
“I needed Voss imprisoned.”
“He is imprisoned.”
Cole looked toward the security camera. “The man in prison is not William Voss.”
Daniel felt cold spread through him.
DNA had confirmed Voss’s identity after his arrest at Ashford. But if the program had manipulated genetic records for decades, DNA confirmation could be manufactured.
“Who did the police arrest?” Owen asked through Daniel’s concealed earpiece.
Cole somehow heard him.
He smiled toward the wall.
“Your federal agents are not outside anymore.”
The earpiece went silent.
Red lights activated across the laboratory.
Steel shutters sealed the exits.
Maria rushed toward Grace as gas began flowing through the vents. Daniel covered his mouth, but the room blurred almost immediately.
The last thing he saw was Cole removing the broken watch from his wrist.
When Daniel woke, he was strapped to a medical bed.
Maria lay unconscious beside him. Grace occupied another bed across the room.
Cole adjusted an intravenous line connected to Daniel’s arm.
“Where is Lily?” Daniel demanded.
“Still safe, for the moment.”
“Release them.”
“I cannot.”
“You asked us to come.”
“I needed your blood.”
“You already had it.”
“Old samples degrade. Your current cells are necessary for the final treatment.”
“Treatment for whom?”
A wheelchair rolled from the shadows.
The man sitting in it appeared ancient. His skin was pale and damaged, his body reduced by disease. Yet Daniel recognized William Voss’s eyes.
The man imprisoned at Ashford had been a substitute.
This was Daniel’s biological father.
“Hello, son,” Voss whispered.
Daniel pulled against the restraints.
“What did you do to the man the police arrested?”
“He believed he was me.”
“Surgery?”
“Memory conditioning. Facial reconstruction. Enough genetic material to defeat standard testing.”
Maria opened her eyes.
Voss smiled at her. “Mrs. Alvarez. We meet again.”
“You murdered Tomas.”
“I approved the necessity.”
Grace began to struggle against her restraints. “You said you would let me go.”
Cole looked away.
Voss wheeled himself closer to Daniel.
“Cancer,” he said. “The same aggressive form that killed your mother. An almost poetic punishment.”
“You expect my blood to save you.”
“Your cells have already prolonged my life. A complete marrow transfer may cure me.”
“Then die.”
Voss’s smile remained.
“You misunderstand the negotiation.”
A screen activated above Daniel.
Live footage showed Sofia in a protected apartment with Lily. Blanket slept near the door. Two federal guards stood in the hallway.
A man dressed as an officer entered the frame.
Daniel recognized Nathan Mercer.
Nathan was supposed to be awaiting trial.
He looked directly into the hidden camera and smiled.
Voss spoke softly.
“If you refuse the procedure, Nathan will kill everyone in that apartment.”
Maria screamed at the screen as Nathan approached Lily’s door.
Daniel strained against the restraints until blood ran beneath the straps.
“Leave her alone!”
Voss held up a remote control.
“One command stops him.”
Daniel stared at the IV entering his arm.
“What happens to me after the transfer?”
Cole answered quietly.
“You may survive.”
“And if I don’t?”
Voss leaned close enough for Daniel to smell medicine on his breath.
“Then Lily keeps her mother.”
Maria shook her head violently.
“No, Daniel. Do not choose for us.”
On the screen, Nathan opened Lily’s bedroom door.
Daniel closed his eyes.
For years, he had tested whether people would stay when he had nothing to offer.
Now the people he loved were asking him not to disappear for them.
He opened his eyes and looked at Voss.
“I’ll do it.”
Maria began to cry.
Daniel continued, “But I want proof Lily is released first.”
Voss smiled.
“My blood after her freedom.”
“Agreed.”
Cole prepared the procedure.
Then Grace spoke from across the room.
“He is lying, Daniel.”
Everyone turned toward her.
“There is no cure,” she said. “He doesn’t need your marrow to survive.”
Voss’s smile vanished.
May you like
Grace looked directly at Daniel.
“He needs it to create an army of children just like us.”
