Chapter 7 - THE TOWER OF LIES
Celeste climbed the narrow maintenance stairs through the core of the skyscraper, her breath burning in her lungs, her bare feet bruised and bloody. Every floor she passed echoed with the distant sounds of gunfire and shouting as Thorne’s mercenaries systematically swept the building.
She knew this structure better than anyone alive. She and Julian had designed every blueprint, every ventilation shaft, every hidden security conduit before the foundation was poured.
Eighty floors. She didn't use the elevators. She crawled through the vertical electrical chase, pulling herself upward cable by cable, driven by nothing but the burning image of her daughters’ faces.
Down below in the bunker, the miracle was unfolding in agonizing beauty.
Esme opened her eyes. The blinding pain had subsided into a warm, thrumming vibration that pulsed from the base of her spine all the way down to the tips of her toes.
She looked down at her feet. For five years, those feet had been lifeless weights, unresponsive to every command her brain sent.
Slowly, deliberately, Esme concentrated.
Her right big toe moved.
A sob hitched in Ivy’s chest. "Esme... did you see that?"
"Ivy, try," Esme whispered, sweat pouring down her face. "Try to move your foot."
Ivy closed her eyes, visualizing the memory of running through the summer grass with their father, feeling the soft earth beneath her heels. She pushed the thought down her spine like a bolt of lightning.
Her left knee bent.
Caleb dropped to his knees beside them, tears spilling unashamedly down his scarred face. "Julian... you did it, my friend. You saved them."
CRACK!
The main blast door buckled inward as a shaped C4 charge blew the titanium hinges apart. Heavy smoke filled the clean room as two of Thorne’s mercenaries stormed in with flashlights and raised weapons.
"Target acquired!" one shouted. "The doctor and the brats!"
Caleb shoved the medical table over, drawing an emergency scalpel from the tray. But before he could throw himself into the line of fire, a metallic screech cut through the room.
Ivy, her legs shaking with violent, newborn strength, pushed herself off the medical bed. She gripped the heavy steel IV pole with both hands and swung it with all the momentum of her awakening body directly into the knee of the first mercenary.
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The man collapsed with a scream of agony. Esme, rolling off the opposite side, kicked the fallen guard’s rifle across the floor straight into Caleb’s hands.
"Nobody touches our family!" Ivy shouted, standing upright on her own two feet for the first time in five years, swaying like a young oak in a storm, but refusing to fall.
