CHAPTER 6 — THE LABORATORY BENEATH THE LAKE
The entrance to the laboratory was hidden inside an abandoned boathouse.
Nathaniel forbade me from going.
I went anyway.
By then, obedience felt more dangerous than defiance.
Marcus drove Dr. Hart, Nathaniel, and me across the frozen estate in an armored vehicle. Federal agents followed behind us. Snow had begun falling, covering the road that circled Hawthorne Lake.
The boathouse leaned over the black water like a dying animal.
Inside, a section of wooden flooring had been lifted, exposing steel stairs descending underground.
The lock on the entrance door had been opened without damage.
A circular depression in the metal matched the shape of my mother’s emerald pendant.
Jonathan had the necklace.
Nathaniel looked at me.
“You will remain upstairs.”
“No.”
“Grace.”
“My mother died because everyone decided what she should know.”
“That is not what happened.”
“You don’t know what happened.”
His jaw tightened.
Neither of us moved.
Marcus finally handed me a protective vest.
Nathaniel looked furious.
Marcus shrugged.
“She will follow us without one.”
The underground stairway descended nearly sixty feet.
Cold white lights activated as we moved. The air smelled of metal, dust, and old chemicals. At the bottom, a corridor stretched beneath the lake.
Photographs lined the walls.
Children.
Dozens of them.
Some were infants in hospital bassinets.
Others were older, standing beside height charts or wearing identification numbers around their necks.
Subject 3.
Subject 11.
Subject 22.
Subject 46.
I stopped in front of one picture.
A little girl sat in a yellow dress, holding a stuffed rabbit.
Subject 1.
Her dark curls framed bright green eyes.
My mother.
Nathaniel touched the wall.
“Eleanor.”
His voice shattered.
Beneath her photograph were medical measurements beginning when she was four years old.
My mother had been the first child in the program.
“She knew,” I whispered.
Dr. Hart shook her head.
“Not at that age.”
“She grew up inside an experiment.”
Nathaniel stepped away from the wall.
The grief on his face transformed into fury.
“My father built this.”
An agent called us forward.
A central control room contained rows of dark monitors and preserved storage units. Most had been emptied.
One screen remained active.
A blinking message appeared:
WELCOME HOME, NATHANIEL.
Nathaniel approached the console.
The screen changed.
A video began playing.
Alexander Cross appeared on the screen.
He looked perhaps seventy, though he would have been over ninety if he were alive today. His silver hair was perfectly combed. His voice was calm.
“My son,” he said. “If you are seeing this, Eleanor’s line has survived.”
Nathaniel stood motionless.
“I created Cross Meridian to defeat human weakness. Disease. Aging. Dependency. Your sister possessed the genetic pattern I required, but she rejected the future I offered.”
I felt physically ill.
The recording continued.
“She stole research, fled with a pregnancy, and attempted to expose the program. I could not allow that.”
Nathaniel slammed his cane against the floor.
“You killed her.”
The recording could not answer.
But Alexander continued as if he had predicted the accusation.
“I did not kill Eleanor. Her death was an unfortunate consequence of disobedience.”
A sound came from the corridor behind us.
A gunshot.
Agents shouted.
Marcus pushed me behind a storage unit.
Another shot struck the control panel.
The screen went dark.
Jonathan appeared at the far end of the laboratory holding a pistol.
His face was bruised, his clothes wet, and my mother’s necklace hung from his fist.
“Everyone stay where you are.”
Federal agents raised their weapons.
Jonathan pressed the gun against the side of a glass cylinder.
Inside was a collection of frozen biological samples.
“Shoot me and every remaining sample is destroyed.”
Nathaniel looked at him.
“I do not care about the samples.”
Jonathan smiled.
“You should.”
He touched a button beside the cylinder.
A label illuminated.
GENESIS PRIME — NATHANIEL CROSS.
I stared at Nathaniel.
His face revealed nothing.
“What is that?” I asked.
Jonathan laughed.
“Ask your uncle.”
Nathaniel’s voice was controlled.
“When I was seventeen, I suffered a spinal injury.”
I looked at his cane.
“The doctors collected tissue and reproductive samples before experimental surgery.”
Dr. Hart covered her mouth.
“Alexander preserved them.”
Jonathan pointed at my stomach.
“He did more than preserve them.”
The truth struck me with such force that I nearly fell.
“No.”
Jonathan smiled wider.
“The baby isn’t mine.”
His eyes moved toward Nathaniel.
“It’s his.”
The laboratory became completely silent.
My hand pressed against the life inside me.
Nathaniel stepped backward as though he had been shot.
“That is impossible.”
“Your father had a plan for the Cross bloodline,” Jonathan said. “Eleanor’s genetic resistance combined with yours.”
Nathaniel’s face twisted with horror.
“She is my niece.”
“Exactly. Concentrated compatibility.”
Dr. Hart’s voice became sharp.
“That level of genetic relation would create enormous risks.”
“Not after gene correction.”
Jonathan tapped the glass cylinder.
“The embryo was edited before implantation.”
I could not breathe.
My child.
My baby.
Not the result of an affair.
Not Jonathan’s heir.
The product of a sick man’s obsession.
Nathaniel looked at me, devastated.
“Grace, I did not know.”
I believed him.
That almost made it worse.
Jonathan moved toward the emergency exit.
“The child belongs to the program.”
“No,” I said.
He looked at me.
“She belongs to me.”
It was the first time anyone had revealed the baby’s sex.
I had chosen not to know.
“How do you know it’s a girl?”
Jonathan’s face changed.
He had made a mistake.
“You saw the genetic report,” I whispered.
He tightened his grip on the gun.
“You monitored her.”
“She is the first viable result in twenty-five years.”
“She is not a result.”
“She’s worth billions.”
Nathaniel moved one step closer.
Jonathan aimed the pistol at him.
“Stop.”
“You married Grace to gain legal control of her child.”
“Yes.”
The confession echoed through the laboratory.
“You planned to divorce her before the birth,” Nathaniel said.
“Yes.”
“You altered the medical records.”
“Yes.”
“You bribed the judge.”
Jonathan smiled.
“Yes.”
Every word was being recorded by federal body cameras.
He no longer cared.
That frightened me.
“You still need Grace alive,” Nathaniel said.
“Only until delivery.”
My blood turned to ice.
Jonathan looked directly at me.
“The plan was a surgical complication. Tragic hemorrhage. Grieving husband. Sole surviving parent.”
“You were going to kill me.”
“You were never supposed to know.”
Nathaniel lunged.
Jonathan fired.
The bullet struck Nathaniel in the shoulder.
Agents opened fire, hitting Jonathan in the leg.
He collapsed beside the storage cylinder.
The necklace slid across the floor.
I ran toward Nathaniel.
He was conscious, one hand pressed against the wound.
“Stay down,” Marcus shouted.
Jonathan crawled toward the emergency controls.
Blood streaked behind him.
His hand reached a red switch.
Dr. Hart saw it first.
“That releases the lake pressure!”
Jonathan smiled through the pain.
“If I can’t have the child, no one gets the evidence.”
He pulled the switch.
An alarm roared.
Cracks formed across the laboratory ceiling.
Water burst through the concrete.
Agents rushed toward the exit.
Marcus dragged Nathaniel up.
I grabbed the necklace from the floor.
The lights flickered.
A steel door began descending across the main corridor.
We ran.
The water reached my ankles.
Then my knees.
Nathaniel stumbled, weakened by blood loss.
I wrapped his arm over my shoulders.
“Leave me,” he gasped.
“No.”
The door dropped lower.
Marcus slid beneath it first, then turned to pull me through.
Nathaniel shoved me toward him.
I landed on the other side.
The steel barrier crashed down.
Nathaniel remained trapped inside.
I screamed his name.
Through a narrow glass window, I saw him pound against the controls.
Water rose around his waist.
Marcus tried overriding the lock.
Nothing worked.
Nathaniel looked at me through the glass.
Then his eyes dropped to the emerald necklace in my hand.
He pointed toward the door.
A small circular indentation sat beside the control panel.
The key.
I pressed the emerald into the opening.
The system scanned it.
A mechanical voice spoke.
PRIMARY HEIR CONFIRMED.
The door lifted.
Marcus pulled Nathaniel through seconds before the corridor flooded.
We escaped the boathouse as the structure collapsed into Hawthorne Lake.
Jonathan did not come out.
Neither did the biological samples.
By the time paramedics carried Nathaniel toward an ambulance, federal divers were already preparing to search the submerged laboratory.
I stood in the snow, soaked and shaking, holding my mother’s necklace.
A federal agent approached me.
“We recovered a transmission before the system went down.”
“What transmission?”
“The laboratory sent a message to an external server.”
“Where?”
“We’re tracing it.”
My phone vibrated inside my coat.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
It showed me standing outside the boathouse, taken only seconds earlier.
Beneath it was a message.
JONATHAN WAS EXPENDABLE.
THE CHILD IS NOT.
May you like
Then another message arrived.
COME TO YOUR MOTHER’S GRAVE ALONE, OR NATHANIEL CROSS DIES BEFORE SUNRISE.
