Chapter 14 - The Dead Woman’s Voice
Daniel froze with his fingers above the keys.
He knew that voice.
It had comforted him through childhood fevers, warned him not to stay out late, and whispered his name during her final night in the hospital.
“Elena?”
A weak knock came from behind the vault.
“Daniel, listen to me. Lydia is not alone.”
Samuel stared at the steel door.
“Elena is dead.”
“No,” Daniel said. “Someone made me believe she was.”
Victor examined the keyboard lock.
“This could be another recording.”
Elena answered immediately.
“Victor, you still tap your left thumb when you’re lying.”
Victor looked down.
His thumb had been moving against his coat.
Eleanor stepped closer to the vault.
“Elena, who is with Lydia?”
A long pause followed.
Then Elena whispered, “The original trustees.”
Samuel’s expression changed.
“That’s impossible. They would be over ninety.”
“Some are.”
A mechanical sound came from within the vault.
Chains moved.
Lydia shouted, “Do not play the sequence!”
Elena shouted over her.
“Play it now!”
Daniel looked between Samuel and Victor.
“Which one is telling the truth?”
Samuel placed his ear against the steel.
“The vault was designed with two chambers. One voice may be coming from each side.”
Eleanor pointed toward the keyboard.
“Then the sequence may open one chamber and seal the other.”
Daniel studied the scratched keys.
Seven notes.
But the third movement had never been completed.
“The sequence is missing a final note.”
Samuel nodded slowly.
“That was Lydia’s secret.”
Victor looked toward Daniel’s tattoo.
“The broken note.”
Daniel raised his wrist.
The faded tattoo showed the guitar symbol crossed by an incomplete musical mark. Beneath the broken line was a tiny dot he had never noticed before.
A lower key.
He pressed it.
A scream came from behind the vault.
Not Lydia.
Arthur.
The steel door split down the center.
One side opened inward.
The other slammed shut.
Daniel rushed through the opening.
He entered a vast underground archive filled with shelves, tapes, contracts, and old instruments.
At the center sat Elena in a wheelchair.
Alive.
Older than he remembered, but unmistakably her.
Daniel ran to her.
She touched his face with trembling hands.
“I’m sorry.”
He could barely speak.
“I watched you die.”
“You watched a woman wearing my identity die.”
Behind her, Lydia stood beside a second sealed door.
Arthur was trapped between two metal partitions, one arm pinned against the wall.
Samuel approached him.
“Where are the trustees?”
Arthur smiled through the pain.
“They are already in the ballroom.”
Daniel turned.
“What ballroom?”
Arthur looked toward the ceiling.
“The event never ended.”
A monitor above the archive shelves switched on.
The ballroom appeared on-screen.
Every guest was still inside.
But now each exit was guarded by armed men.
At the piano sat a young woman Daniel had never seen before.
She raised her hands over the keys.
Elena whispered, “That is Arthur’s daughter.”
May you like
The woman pressed the first note of the third movement.
Every light in the underground archive turned red.
