Chapter 22 - The Core Beneath the Station
The floor beneath the mirror room opened into a cylindrical shaft.
A hidden platform rose from below.
Daniel, Laura, and Buddy stepped onto it.
The platform descended rapidly, passing levels filled with pipes, cables, and sealed observation windows. Through one window, Daniel saw rows of medical beds. Through another, he saw armed guards preparing equipment.
The facility beneath the station was far larger than anyone had imagined.
Laura gripped the railing.
“How could this exist beneath the city?”
Daniel looked down into the endless shaft.
“Money hides many things.”
The platform stopped before a circular steel door marked CORE ACCESS.
It opened automatically.
Inside stood a vast chamber built around a glowing central machine. Hundreds of cables extended from it like roots, disappearing into the walls.
Michael and Dr. Carter were already there.
Michael held the stabilizer.
Dr. Carter stood beside Ethan’s chamber.
Adrian waited on an elevated platform above them.
“You made it,” he said.
Daniel approached Ethan.
“Give him the medicine.”
Michael shook his head.
“The chamber won’t accept the dose.”
Adrian answered.
“It requires a compatible donor signal.”
Emily’s voice suddenly came through the emergency receiver.
“We reached life-support control.”
Marcus added,
“The timers are real. Ninety-four minutes remain.”
Adrian looked toward the speakers.
“Excellent.”
Daniel turned to Michael.
“What is a donor signal?”
Michael stared at him.
“A living genetic match.”
Laura stepped forward.
“I’m his mother.”
Michael checked the scanner.
“Not close enough.”
Adrian looked directly at Daniel.
“But you may be.”
Daniel felt the photograph inside his pocket.
“My wife carried the marker.”
Adrian nodded.
“And during her final treatment, you received a blood transfusion after the laboratory fire.”
Daniel remembered waking in another hospital with burns along his arms. He had been told an anonymous donor saved him.
Michael’s expression darkened.
“That blood came from Emily.”
Emily heard him over the receiver.
“What?”
Adrian smiled.
“Daniel carries traces of Subject Zero-One’s regenerative cells.”
Dr. Carter looked between Ethan and Daniel.
“You’re saying his blood could calibrate the stabilizer?”
“Yes.”
Daniel rolled up his sleeve immediately.
“Do it.”
Michael stopped him.
“There is a risk.”
“To me?”
“To both of you.”
Adrian answered from above.
“The transfer could stabilize Ethan.”
“Or?”
“It could link the regenerative process permanently.”
Daniel looked at Ethan’s unconscious face.
“What does that mean?”
Michael’s voice was heavy.
“If one body begins to fail, the other may respond.”
Laura stared at him.
“They could become biologically dependent?”
“We don’t know.”
Daniel extended his arm.
“Do it.”
Dr. Carter connected the line.
Blood moved from Daniel into the calibration device, then mixed with the stabilizer.
Ethan’s chamber filled with soft blue light.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then Ethan’s heart rhythm steadied.
His temperature began falling.
Laura cried with relief.
But Daniel suddenly collapsed.
Buddy barked and rushed to him.
A burning sensation spread through Daniel’s veins. Dark branching lines appeared beneath the skin of his arm—the same pattern that had appeared on Ethan.
Michael stared in horror.
“This isn’t supposed to happen.”
Adrian looked pleased.
“No.”
He stepped down from the platform.
“It is happening exactly as I hoped.”
The central machine activated.
Every sealed chamber throughout the facility began opening at once.
Emily’s voice came through the receiver.
“Michael, something is wrong.”
Marcus shouted behind her.
“The life-support system isn’t shutting down.”
A low alarm spread through the core.
Emily finished the warning.
“It’s waking all one hundred and nine subjects.”
May you like
Across the chamber, steel doors unlocked one after another.
And from the dark corridors beyond them came the sound of hundreds of bare feet moving toward the core.
