Chapter 8 - The Man Who Knocked Four Times
Nobody moved.
Four knocks.
A pause.
Four more.
Marcus had used the same signal all night.
Emma wondered how many times something dangerous could disguise itself as familiar before familiarity itself became dangerous.
Alexander took the radio.
"Why were you following Emma three months ago?"
Silence.
Then Marcus answered.
"Because Rebecca asked me to."
Everyone looked at her.
Rebecca closed her eyes.
"Open the door."
Alexander didn't.
"Explain first."
Rebecca had met Marcus six years earlier after spotting Continuance surveillance around Emma's school. Marcus was already working Harrison security but had discovered unexplained transfers to shell companies tied to Charles.
He became Rebecca's inside source.
The photographs proved surveillance.
Not betrayal.
"Then why didn't he tell me?" Alexander demanded.
Marcus answered through the radio.
"Because until tonight, I didn't know if you were compromised too."
That insult might have started a fight on any other day.
Tonight Alexander pressed the door release.
Marcus entered with blood on his sleeve and one missing earpiece.
"Three floors above us are sealed. Charles is evacuating through the river tunnel."
Emma looked at the server rack.
"Can we copy this?"
Vale shook his head. "Encrypted hardware."
"Can we carry it?"
Alexander looked at the central unit.
"That rack weighs eight hundred pounds."
Emma looked at the twins.
They had finally quieted.
Grace's fingers opened and closed against Evelyn's coat.
Four notes.
Noah answered.
Vale's expression changed.
"The key isn't on the server."
The tonal pattern stored in the twins was not a location token alone.
It was a rotating encryption seed.
The children themselves had been used as living key carriers because their paired auditory memory responses were difficult to duplicate perfectly.
Emma stared at him.
"So to open the files, they need the twins alive."
"And calm," Vale said.
"That's why the lullaby."
Rebecca connected a portable decoder to the server.
They played the twins' alternating pattern.
The system unlocked.
Folders appeared.
Legal agreements.
Medical logs.
Payments.
Board correspondence.
And a video labeled SUCCESSION TEST - A.H.
Alexander opened it.
He was on the screen.
Younger by six years.
Unconscious on a hospital bed.
A technician pressed a scanning plate against his palm.
Charles stood nearby.
"Baseline looks good," someone said.
Then Richard Harrison stepped into frame.
Alexander stopped breathing.
His father had died seven years earlier.
The timestamp was six years old.
Impossible by one year.
Emma leaned closer.
"The timestamp is fake."
Rebecca shook her head.
"Or the death date was."
They opened financial records.
Richard Harrison's private medical trust had continued purchasing medication for eleven months after his public death.
Alexander remembered the funeral.
Closed casket.
Private.
No viewing.
A memory returned like a blade.
His uncle Charles telling him grief was easier when the last image remained healthy.
Marcus found another file.
PATIENT RH - TERMINAL TRANSFER.
Location: SUBLEVEL RIVER UNIT.
The river tunnel.
Alexander looked toward the exit.
"Charles isn't just escaping."
Rebecca nodded.
"He's retrieving something."
They copied the most damaging files to three drives.
One went to Marcus.
One to Emma.
One to Evelyn.
Alexander took none.
"Why not you?" Emma asked.
"Because if they catch us, they'll search me first."
They moved into the maintenance corridor.
Water dripped from overhead pipes. The hidden route sloped toward the Chicago River.
At the end stood a steel door.
From behind it came an old man's voice.
"Alex?"
Alexander stopped.
He had not heard that voice in seven years.
His face emptied.
"Dad?"
The door opened from the other side.
May you like
Richard Harrison stood there.
Alive.
