Chapter 30 - DANIEL’S SILENCE
The reconstructed bedroom seemed to shrink around them.
Alex held the transfer order in one hand and the hospital bracelet in the other. The name Ethan Vale stared back at him like a ghost from a life he had never been allowed to remember.
Daniel stood near the doorway, silent.
Alex’s voice was low.
“Did your father know about me?”
Daniel closed his eyes briefly.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest answer I have.”
Bennett stepped between them slightly, not to stop Alex, but to keep the room from becoming something Voss could use against them.
“Daniel,” she said carefully, “if your family name is on that order, we need the truth.”
Daniel looked at the transfer paper.
“My father was involved in many things at Marlowe that he never explained. I spent years thinking he was protecting the company. Then after he died, I found gaps. Missing files. Accounts that didn’t belong to any division. Names that vanished from records.”
He looked at Alex.
“But I never knew one of those names was yours.”
Alex wanted to believe him.
He also wanted to scream.
Before anyone could speak again, the bedroom wall behind the desk split open with a soft hydraulic hiss.
A narrow passage appeared.
At the end of it glowed another room.
This one was not a copy of any childhood memory.
It was a nursery.
White walls.
Glass cribs.
Old medical machines.
And on the far wall, painted in faded blue letters, were the words:
ORION NURSERY — ACTIVE SUBJECTS
Alex stepped toward it before Daniel could stop him.
Inside, every crib was empty except one.
Not because a baby lay there.
Because a file did.
Alex approached slowly.
The folder on the crib had no dust on it.
Someone had placed it there recently.
Across the front was written:
ETHAN VALE / ALEX CARTER
Beneath that:
BIOLOGICAL FAMILY STATUS: CLASSIFIED
Alex opened the folder.
The first page contained only a photograph.
A woman.
The same woman from Voss’s screen.
This time her face was clear.
Daniel stepped beside Alex and went completely still.
Alex looked at him.
“You said you didn’t know her.”
Daniel’s voice barely came out.
“I said no because I didn’t want it to be true.”
Alex looked back at the photograph.
“Who is she?”
Daniel swallowed hard.
“My father kept that photo in his private safe.”
May you like
He looked at Alex with something close to fear.
“And he told me she died before I was old enough to ask her name.”
