Mark's Choice

Richard. The name was a thunderclap that leveled the room. Chloe—Elena—dropped the glass shard, her fingers splaying against the blood-slicked tile as if trying to push the floor away. She wasn't looking at me anymore; she was staring at the man in the long coat, her face a contorted map of ancient, unresolved terror.

"You're dead," she whispered, the words bubbling through a mix of white dust and saliva. "Mark said the car... the fire... he said he saw the body."

The man didn't flinch. He closed the leather-bound book—Sarah’s journal—with a finality that made the kitchen cabinets rattle. The red emergency strobe caught the edge of a scar that ran from his ear to his collar, a jagged relic of a fire that was supposed to have ended a legacy.

"Mark says many things when his hands are tied," Richard said. His voice was a calm, low-frequency hum that seemed to exist beneath the screeching industrial metal still blasting from the garage. "He’s currently rediscovering the value of silence in the backseat of my car."

He looked past Elena, his gaze landing on me. I was huddled against the kitchen island, the brass heron heavy and useless in my hand. I felt the heat of the blood on my ribs, the sting of the salt in my palms, but I couldn't move.

"Where is she?" I rasped, my throat raw. "Where is Lily?"

Richard tilted his head toward the garage. "Safe. For now."

"Kill her!" Elena screamed, suddenly launching herself up from the floor. She didn't aim for Richard; she lunged for the handgun she’d lost under the refrigerator. "Neutralize the asset, you coward! Richard is the witness! Kill them both!"

She scrambled on her knees, her shredded hands reaching into the dark gap beneath the steel appliance.

"Stop it!"

The voice wasn't mine, and it wasn't Richard's. It was Mark.

My husband stumbled into the kitchen from the garage. His face was a mask of white airbag powder and dark, drying blood. He was swaying, his gait jerky and uncoordinated, but his arms were locked around a white bundle.

Lily.

She was awake now, her tiny face scrunched in a silent, terrified wail that only a mother could hear through the chaos.

"Mark, give her to me," I pleaded, trying to stand. My legs buckled, the glass shards grinding into my knees.

Mark didn't move toward me. He stopped in the center of the kitchen, the red strobe light painting him and the baby in rhythmic flashes of crimson. He looked at Elena, who was now clutching the handgun, then at Richard, then finally at me.

"She has Sarah's eyes, Elara," he whispered. His voice was thick with a terminal, breaking grief. "I can't do it again. I can't watch another one disappear."

"The gun, Elena," Richard commanded, taking a single, predatory step forward.

Elena leveled the barrel at my chest, her hand vibrating with a manic, high-voltage energy. "She's the incubator, Mark! She's the only one left who can tie us to Sarah! If she lives, we're ghosts! Kill her or I'll do it myself!"

Mark looked at the baby in his arms, then at the woman he had traded his soul for. His fingers tightened around Lily’s blanket. He took a long, shaky breath and looked directly at Richard.

"Tell her," Mark said, his voice suddenly hard and clear over the music. "Tell her what you found in Portland. Tell her why the signature didn't match."

Elena’s hand froze. The barrel of the gun wavered, dipping toward the floor as a new, darker realization began to dawn behind her eyes.

Mark turned his gaze back to me, his expression a haunting mixture of apology and warning.

"'I found the original paperwork in the safe,'" he said, quoting the book in Richard's hand. "'Sarah didn't name Elena as the guardian. She named the father.'"

Elena let out a low, guttural growl. "I am the only family she has!"

"No," Mark whispered. "Richard isn't the witness, Elena. He’s the claimant."

The monitor in the kitchen suddenly flared to life, a high-definition image cutting through the static. It was a photograph I had never seen—dated only two years ago.

The woman in the photograph was wearing her necklace. The one he said was his grandmother's.

But she wasn't Sarah.

She was me.

And I was holding a toddler I didn't recognize.

Mark's voice dropped to a terrifying, hollow whisper.

"'Doesn't know about Portland...'" he murmured, looking at the man in the long coat. "The voice dropped."