Chapter 13 - The Two Tapes
Samuel pulled his coat over his mouth.
“Find the ventilation controls.”
Daniel searched the walls while Victor tried forcing the locked door.
Eleanor moved to the empty hospital bed and ripped the metal rail loose.
“Use this.”
Victor drove it into the gap beside the lock.
The gas thickened.
Daniel found a panel behind the monitor and tore it open. Inside were several wires and a small cassette deck.
Two empty slots were labeled 1 and 18.
He looked at Samuel.
“Arthur wants us to play the tapes here.”
Samuel shook his head.
“It could trigger something.”
“We’re already trapped.”
Daniel removed Tape One from the violin case.
Tape Eighteen was gone with Arthur.
Then Eleanor reached into her handbag.
“I picked this up on the platform.”
She held out the missing tape.
Victor stared at her.
“You had it the whole time?”
“I didn’t know who to trust.”
Daniel inserted both tapes.
The machine activated immediately.
The gas stopped.
The door remained locked.
Tape One began first.
A younger Arthur spoke.
“The child changes everything. If Lydia signs the transfer before the birth, control remains with the board.”
Then Victor’s younger voice replied.
“She won’t sign.”
A third voice entered.
Samuel.
“Then we delay the birth registration.”
Daniel looked at him.
“You were part of it.”
Samuel’s face hardened.
“Keep listening.”
Tape Eighteen started beneath the first recording.
The two conversations overlapped.
At first, they sounded chaotic.
Then certain words aligned.
Not random.
A hidden message formed between the recordings.
Winter Room access. Lower vault. Use the concerto sequence.
Eleanor moved toward the wall covered in faint musical symbols.
“There.”
Seven notes had been written into the paint.
Daniel recognized them as the opening of the third movement.
Samuel pressed the corresponding symbols.
A section of the floor slid open.
Cold air rose from a staircase below.
The door behind them suddenly unlocked.
Victor looked toward the exit.
“This could be our only chance to leave.”
Daniel looked down the hidden stairs.
“Or the only way to find Lydia.”
He descended first.
The staircase ended at an underground corridor far older than the building above. Framed photographs covered both walls.
Each showed a young musician standing beside wealthy sponsors.
Some names had been crossed out.
Others were stamped with the word TRANSFERRED.
Eleanor stopped at one image.
“That’s me.”
The photograph had been taken forty years earlier.
Beneath it was a contract number and a handwritten note:
Talent acquired. Career redirected.
Eleanor’s face became pale.
“They destroyed my first orchestra appointment.”
Samuel examined another photograph.
“This wasn’t only about our music.”
Daniel continued down the corridor.
At the end stood a steel vault door with a piano keyboard built into it.
Seven keys were marked by scratches.
The concerto sequence.
Daniel placed his hands above them.
Before he could play, a voice came from behind the vault.
“Daniel?”
It was Lydia.
Then a second voice shouted from farther inside.
“Don’t open it!”
May you like
Elena’s voice.
The woman who had died eleven months ago.
