Chapter 7 - The Father Beneath the Site
Marta moved toward the screen.
Her father had disappeared when she was sixteen. Her mother had claimed he left the country after betraying the family company.
Marta had spent years hating him.
Now he sat inside an underground chamber, alive.
“Papa?”
The man leaned closer to the camera.
“You have the key. Good.”
Elena struggled against Victor’s grip.
“Turn off the feed.”
Robert took the remote from her.
“No one turns off anything.”
Marta’s father continued.
“The key opens the chamber, but it also opens the final archive. You must choose one.”
Marta looked down at the small piece of metal in her hand.
“What is in the final archive?”
“The truth about Meridian. The names of every company and government that funded it. The records of every death they arranged.”
Elena stopped fighting.
“And if she opens the chamber?” Henrik asked.
The man smiled sadly.
“Then I walk free.”
Victor’s expression became tense.
“That is not the whole answer.”
Marta looked at him.
“What are you hiding?”
Victor released Elena.
“Your father was not imprisoned because he discovered Meridian. He helped create it.”
The corridor fell silent.
On the screen, Marta’s father did not deny it.
Elena stepped away from Victor.
“He designed the southern chamber,” she said. “He believed unstable geological zones could be controlled and used as natural containment systems.”
“For what?” Robert asked.
Elena looked at the warning display.
“For people who knew too much.”
David slid slowly to the floor, weakening from blood loss.
“They used the site as a prison.”
“And a laboratory,” Victor added.
Marta stared at her father.
“Were people experimented on?”
His silence answered her.
The floor shook again, harder this time.
A new warning appeared:
MANUAL RELEASE SEQUENCE DETECTED.
Elena turned toward David.
“What did you do?”
David looked up, barely conscious.
“I did not come down here to steal the key.”
He pointed weakly toward the dark end of the corridor.
“I came to stop someone else.”
Footsteps echoed beyond the monitors.
Slow. Measured. Growing closer.
The gray-suited woman emerged from the shadows, no longer holding a pistol.
She carried an old leather folder marked with the Kovacs family crest.
Behind her walked six armed guards wearing Meridian symbols.
She addressed Marta.
“My name is Sofia Kovacs.”
Marta stared at her.
She had never heard the name.
Sofia opened the folder and removed a birth certificate.
“You were told you were Elena’s only daughter,” she said. “That was the first lie.”
Elena’s face went pale.
Sofia smiled without warmth.
“I am your older sister.”
Marta looked between them.
“That is impossible.”
“No,” Sofia replied. “What is impossible is that they kept our father imprisoned for twenty-two years and expected him to remain silent.”
On the monitor, Marta’s father stood.
The chamber door behind him began to unlock.
Victor looked at the key in Marta’s hand.
“You did not activate that.”
Marta shook her head.
Sofia raised a second key.
“No,” she said. “I did.”
May you like
A siren began wailing through the underground complex.
Then the chamber door opened, and something moved behind Marta’s father that none of them had expected to see.
