Chapter 9 - THE SECOND DAUGHTER
The heat inside the vertical concrete shaft was suffocating.
Every breath through the rebreather tasted of rubber and compressed air, while outside the mask, the air grew gray and opaque with toxic diesel fumes rising from the subterranean generator bay. Mariela climbed downward with mechanical speed, her gloves gripping the cold, greasy steel rungs. Twenty feet. Thirty feet. Forty feet.
At the bottom of the shaft, her boots hit a steel mesh catwalk suspended over an underground reservoir of dark, stagnant runoff water.
She clicked her weapon-mounted light to life.
The Manor facility was twice the size of the cellar on Oak Street. Here, there were no snake terrariums. Instead, the facility was designed like a clinical isolation ward. Fluorescent tube fixtures hung from the vaulted limestone ceiling, flickering erratically as the backup generators sputtered under the strain of the atmospheric reversal.
The air was thick with the smell of scorched diesel and ozone.
Down the central corridor, three reinforced observation cells with tempered acrylic windows were set into the rock wall.
Mariela ran down the catwalk, her boots echoing like gunshots through the subterranean chamber. She approached the first cell.
Empty. A stripped cot and a collection of rusted metal bowls.
She approached the second cell.
Inside sat a woman, curled into a defensive fetal position against the back wall, coughing violently into her hands. Her face was flushed bright crimson—the unmistakable, deadly signature of advanced carbon monoxide poisoning.
"Federal agents! Cover your face!" Mariela shouted through the rebreather, her voice muffled by the rubber diaphragm.
She examined the locking mechanism. It was an automated magnetic lock, held shut by the active electrical current running through the conduit. She didn't have time to find a bypass dial. Mariela unslung her twelve-gauge tactical shotgun from her back, chambered a heavy solid-lead breaching slug, pressed the muzzle directly against the steel housing of the magnetic lock, and pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The deafening report inside the enclosed stone chamber shattered the remaining acrylic trim. Sparks and liquefied copper sprayed across the concrete as the magnetic circuit violently ruptured.
Mariela kicked the door inward with all her weight.
The woman on the floor looked up, her eyes glassy and unfocused, barely clinging to consciousness. "Arthur...?" she mumbled, her brain starved of oxygen.
"No, honey. The police," Mariela said, unhooking a secondary emergency escape hood from her belt and pulling it over the woman's head, flooding her lungs with pure, medical-grade oxygen. "Breathe. Just breathe."
As Mariela lifted the woman toward the doorway, she heard a soft, high-pitched hum coming from the third cell at the end of the hall.
It wasn't a cough. It was a song.
A child's nursery rhyme, sung in a trembling, fragile voice that barely rose above the hum of the dying generators.
Mariela froze. She looked down the corridor toward the third door. The acrylic window was covered from the inside with construction paper drawings—hundreds of them, taped to the glass with yellowing cellophane tape. Drawings of houses. Drawings of trees. Drawings of a tall man holding the hand of a little girl with bright yellow hair.
Mariela hauled the second woman out onto the catwalk, securing her against the railing where SWAT operators were already descending the maintenance ladder to provide extraction support.
"Take her up!" Mariela ordered the lead operator. "Get her straight to the medevac chopper!"
Mariela turned and sprinted toward the third cell.
She raised the breaching shotgun, pressing it to the lock, and fired.
BOOM.
The door gave way with a screech of torn iron.
Mariela stepped into the room, her weapon lowered, her heart stopping dead in her throat.
Sitting on a small wooden stool in the center of the brightly painted, windowless room was a young girl. She was twelve or thirteen years old, wearing an immaculate blue Sunday dress with white lace trim that was far too small for her growing frame. Her blonde hair was brushed into perfect, rigid curls, held back with a plastic pink barrette.
In her lap, she held a photo album.
She looked up at Mariela without any fear—only a terrifying, serene curiosity that mirrored Arthur Vance's monstrous calm.
"Did Daddy send you?" the girl asked, her voice light and melodic, completely unbothered by the toxic smoke curling beneath the doorframe. "He said when the loud noise starts, it means it's time for my birthday party."
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Mariela pulled her mask down onto her neck, breathing in the stinging, smoky air for just a second so the child could see her human face, her badge, and her eyes.
"No, sweetheart," Mariela said, kneeling gently on the concrete floor, extending a gloved hand toward the child. "Your daddy is never coming back. My name is Mariela. And we're going home."
