Chapter 4 - North Valley
Police arrived at the clinic after the power returned, but the man from the video was gone from Iron Harbor Gym. Brent reported that the rear lock had been opened with a staff key. Nothing was missing except the photograph and a box of old maintenance records Elias kept beneath his locker.
Tyler wanted to leave for North Valley immediately. Renee refused. Maya argued that the message was designed to control them. Elias agreed with both of them: it was a trap, but whoever had set it possessed information they could no longer ignore.
They compromised badly, as frightened people often do. Renee would remain with Brent and give the police everything she remembered. Maya would send copies of the film to Lena Ortiz and a journalist she trusted. Tyler and Elias would drive to North Valley, but Maya insisted on coming. They would share their location continuously and stay outside unless they saw proof.
Rain began as they left the city. Tyler drove, Maya sat beside him, and Elias rested in the back with his injured leg extended. For twenty miles, no one spoke.
Finally Tyler said, “Why did you become a janitor?”
“Because floors do not ask who you used to be.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“After the crash, I could not lift my left arm for a year. Victor made sure every federation believed I had endangered Daniel. Coaching was over. Later, when I recovered, I found work where I could. Warehouses, schools, hospitals. Iron Harbor was supposed to be temporary.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Eleven years.”
Tyler tightened his hands on the wheel. He had trained at the gym for six of those years. Elias had cleaned chalk from his platforms, emptied his bottles, and once called an ambulance when he fainted after cutting water for a competition. Tyler had never asked the man’s surname.
“Did you recognize me the first day?”
“You have Daniel’s eyes. Unfortunately, you developed Victor’s habit of looking at people as if they are equipment.”
Maya looked toward Tyler, expecting anger. He only nodded.
North Valley Neurological Institute had closed fourteen years earlier after a state funding scandal. The main building stood behind a rusted gate in a forested valley. Most windows were boarded, but a light shone on the third floor.
The gate was open.
At 11:57, Tyler parked beneath a dead security lamp. A message arrived from DK-1142: MEDAL IN THE ADMISSIONS SLOT. COME ALONE.
“No,” Elias said.
Tyler removed the medal from his pocket. “If they wanted to kill us, they had easier chances.”
“That does not make this safe.”
“Nothing about my life feels safe anymore.”
Maya copied the film onto a secure drive before Tyler placed the medal in the rusted admissions slot. A mechanical click sounded inside the wall. The front doors unlocked.
They entered together.
The lobby smelled of mold and wet plaster. Old wheelchairs lined one wall. Battery lanterns created a path toward a records elevator that should not have had power. When they stepped inside, the doors closed and carried them downward instead of upward.
“There is no basement on the public plan,” Maya said, studying an emergency map.
Elias replied, “It was never a public building.”
The elevator opened onto a corridor of sealed rooms. Fresh cables ran along the ceiling. Someone had restored part of the facility. At the far end, the man in the navy jacket waited with his hands visible.
“My name is Adrian Vale,” he said. “I worked for Victor for nine years.”
Tyler advanced. “Where is my father?”
“I don’t know.”
Tyler grabbed his coat. Elias pulled them apart.
Adrian did not resist. “If I knew, I would have led with that. I know Daniel survived the laboratory accident and remained here for at least seven years. Victor erased him after a transfer in 2006.”
“Why help us now?” Maya asked.
“Because two months ago Victor ordered me to arrange an accident during Tyler’s livestream. The broken collar was mine.”
Tyler lunged again, but Adrian held up a small drive. “I weakened it, yes. Then I marked the crack so someone might notice. I replaced the farmer’s-carry bolt too, but Elias insisted on inspection before it could fail. I was trying to create evidence against Victor without killing anyone.”
“A child nearly died,” Elias said.
“The child was not part of it. Victor sent another man after he realized I had sabotaged his sabotage.” Adrian looked genuinely sick. “I have done terrible things while telling myself I was waiting for the right moment. You understand that better than anyone, Coach Mercer.”
Elias flinched at the title.
Adrian led them into an archive room. Rows of shelves contained patient files, videotapes, and refrigerated sample boxes powered by a generator. On a steel table lay the torn photograph from Elias’s locker.
“Samuel Mercer was Subject One,” Adrian said. “Daniel Kane was Subject Six. Victor told Elias that Samuel died from an undiagnosed heart condition. He told Daniel that Samuel died because Elias pushed him too hard. Each lie kept the survivors isolated.”
Elias gripped the table. “I saw my brother’s body.”
“You saw a body after a car fire. The identification came from dental records supplied by a clinic Victor owned.”
Adrian inserted the drive into an old computer. A digitized patient log appeared. Subject One had been transferred repeatedly under false names. The most recent entry was only eight months old and listed a private recovery residence called Cedar House.
“Samuel may be alive,” Maya whispered.
Elias sat down. The possibility wounded him more visibly than grief had. For nearly three decades he had built a life around the certainty of his brother’s death. Hope tore through that structure without mercy.
Tyler touched his shoulder. It was the first gentle contact between them.
“And Daniel?” Tyler asked.
Adrian opened another file. Subject Six’s record ended in 2006 with a transfer code rather than a destination. Beneath it was a note: MEMORY RESPONSE INCONSISTENT. RETAINS RECOGNITION OF R.K. AND E.M.
“Renee Kane and Elias Mercer,” Maya said.
Tyler covered his eyes.
A generator alarm suddenly sounded. Adrian looked at the security monitor. Three black vehicles had stopped outside. Armed men entered through the lobby.
“Victor found us,” he said.
Maya checked her phone. The location signal had failed underground. Adrian gathered the drives while Elias pulled open a maintenance cabinet and found a building diagram. A service tunnel led from the archive to an abandoned hydrotherapy wing, then to a drainage outlet beyond the fence.
They moved quickly, but Elias’s injured leg slowed him. Tyler offered his shoulder. Elias refused once, then accepted when voices echoed behind them.
At the hydrotherapy wing, they found the tunnel door chained from the other side. Adrian tried keys with shaking hands. Bullets struck the corridor wall, showering plaster.
Tyler dragged a steel therapy table across the hall as a barrier. “Tell me you have another exit.”
“There’s a pool maintenance shaft,” Adrian said. “But the ladder may be gone.”
They entered the drained therapy pool. Maya found the shaft beneath a corroded grate. Elias used a broken rail as a lever, guiding Tyler’s hands into position. Together they bent the grate enough to crawl through.
Adrian went first with the drives, Maya followed, then Elias. Tyler stayed behind to hold the therapy-room door. When it burst inward, he dropped into the shaft as a gloved hand caught his ankle. Elias locked both hands around Tyler’s wrists. Pain ripped through his damaged wrist, but he did not release. Maya kicked at the attacker’s hand until Tyler came free.
They crawled through freezing water and emerged in the forest beyond the fence. Sirens sounded in the distance; Lena had called police when their shared location disappeared.
Adrian was missing.
They searched until dawn but found only his navy jacket caught on wire near the drainage outlet. The drives were gone with him.
When police searched North Valley, the archive room was burning. Most files were destroyed. Victor Sloane denied being there and produced footage showing him at a charity banquet throughout the night.
Maya’s copied images from the medal survived, but without Adrian’s files they could not prove where Daniel or Samuel had gone.
At sunrise, Tyler received a voicemail from an unknown number. A man’s voice, weak and distorted, spoke only seven words.
“Tyler, do not trust the man who sweeps.”
Elias listened twice. His face became unreadable.
Tyler’s hands began to shake. “That could be my father.”
“Yes,” Elias said.
“Then why is he warning me about you?”
May you like
Before Elias could answer, Maya’s phone displayed an alert from Iron Harbor Gym. The security system had detected motion in the closed building. The live camera showed Renee standing alone on the central platform.
Behind her, someone raised Elias’s broom like a weapon.
