Chapter 12 - The Key Beneath My Skin
I stared at the faint scar across my palm while the others watched in silence.
The hard shape beneath my skin was unmistakable now.
Narrow.
Cold.
Metallic.
The white-haired woman reached for my hand, but I pulled it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“If the second key is inside you, we need to remove it immediately.”
“We?”
“You cannot open the final carriage without both pieces.”
The colorful woman stepped between us.
“She is not a lockbox.”
The guards exchanged a glance.
For the first time, I understood that none of these people saw me as a person. I was evidence. A route. A missing part of a mechanism that had been waiting for years.
Daniel’s voice came through the old speaking tube.
“Anna, listen to me. Your father must have placed it there when you were a child.”
I turned toward the tunnel entrance.
“He cut open my hand?”
“He may have believed it was the only safe place.”
I remembered the accident my mother had described so many times. A broken kitchen glass. Blood on the floor. My father carrying me to a clinic in the middle of the night.
But I had never remembered the clinic.
Only a bright lamp.
A masked man.
My father’s voice saying, “She must never know.”
My stomach turned.
The white-haired woman opened a black medical case carried by one of the guards.
Inside were surgical instruments.
Prepared.
Sterile.
As though she had expected this.
I backed toward the wall.
“No.”
“We do not have time for fear,” she said. “The black train will reach the junction before dawn. After that, the route changes.”
“Where does it go?”
“To the final station.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“It was built beneath the oldest freight terminal in the region. The carriage can only be opened there.”
The colorful woman looked at her suspiciously.
“You said you didn’t know the route.”
“I know the destination. Not the active track.”
The telephone suddenly rang.
We all froze.
I answered.
No one spoke at first.
Then my daughter whispered, “Mom?”
My knees weakened.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know where we are.”
“Is Grandpa with you?”
“Yes, but he’s bleeding.”
A muffled sound followed.
Then my father came onto the line.
“Do not let them cut your hand open.”
The white-haired woman’s face changed.
My father continued quickly.
“The key reacts to heat. If removed incorrectly, it destroys itself.”
“How do I get it out?”
“You don’t. Not yet.”
“What do I do?”
“Find Platform Nine.”
The line crackled.
“There is no Platform Nine here.”
“Not above ground.”
A loud impact sounded from his side.
My daughter cried out.
My husband’s voice appeared in the background.
“Enough.”
My father spoke one last sentence before the connection died.
“Your mother is waiting there.”
I lowered the receiver.
My mother had been dead for eleven years.
May you like
Yet everyone in the room reacted as though they had just heard the name of someone they feared.
---
