Chapter 63: The Trojan Horse

"Martha?" I whispered, my voice barely audible over the thud of boots in the hallway. "You were the one Ben found. The one with dementia."

"Dementia is a good cover," she said, her eyes sharp and clear in the dim light of the closet. "It keeps people from asking questions. Especially people like Edith."

She pressed the file into my hands.

"I kept the records," she said. "The real records. Not the ones Thorne doctored."

"The bodies," I said. "You said you knew where she keeps them."

"Not bodies," Martha corrected. "Failures."

She pointed to a schematic on the first page of the file. It was a map of the facility.

"The basement has two levels," she said. "Level One is where we are now. The labs. The nursery. Level Two... Level Two is cold storage."

"Cryogenics?" I asked.

"No," Martha said. "Just cold. It's an old ice house. From before the war."

She traced a line on the map.

"The failed experiments... the babies that didn't make it... she didn't bury them. She kept them."

"Why?"

"Genetic material," Martha said. "Spare parts. She thought she could use them later. To fix the ones that survived."

I felt sick. "Leo," I whispered. "She's using them on Leo."

"She's trying to," Martha said. "But the tissue is too old. It's necrotic. That's why he's getting worse."

Outside, the boots stopped. A voice barked an order.

"Clear the rooms! Secure the asset!"

"They're looking for you," Martha said. "And they're going to find us."

"We need a distraction," I said.

I looked at the shelves around us. Cleaning supplies. Chemicals.

And a large canister of liquid nitrogen.

"Is that active?" I asked, pointing to the tank.

"It's for the samples," Martha said. "It's full."

"If we open the valve," I said, "it will flood the hall with fog. And displace the oxygen."

"It will kill them," Martha said.

"It will slow them down," I said. "We have masks."

I grabbed two respirators from the safety hook on the wall. I handed one to Martha.

"Put this on."

She hesitated, then nodded. She strapped the mask over her face.

I put mine on. I walked to the tank.

"Ready?"

Martha gripped the door handle.

I turned the valve.

The hiss was deafening. A cloud of white vapor exploded from the nozzle, instantly filling the small closet. The temperature plummeted.

"Now!" I yelled.

Martha threw the door open.

The fog rolled out into the hallway, a freezing, suffocating wave.

"What the—" a guard shouted.

Then he started coughing. Choking.

The fog was thick, opaque. I grabbed Martha's hand and pulled her into the hallway. We ran, blindly, through the whiteout.

"The stairs!" I shouted. "Where are the stairs?"

"Left!" Martha yelled through her mask. "Second door on the left!"

We stumbled past the guards, who were on their knees, gasping for air. One of them grabbed my ankle. I kicked him away.

We reached the door. I threw it open.

We were in a stairwell. The air was clear here.

I ripped off my mask. "Down or up?"

"Down," Martha said. "To Level Two."

"Why?"

"Because there's an exit," she said. "An old coal chute. It comes out in the woods."

We ran down the concrete steps. The air grew colder with every flight. By the time we reached the bottom, I could see my breath.

The door to Level Two was heavy iron, rusted shut.

"It's locked," I said, pulling on the handle.

"Not for me," Martha said.

She pulled a key from a chain around her neck. An old, brass skeleton key.

"I kept this, too," she said.

She turned the key. The lock clicked.

We pushed the door open.

The smell hit us first. Not rot. Not decay.

Cold.

It smelled like a freezer that had been closed for thirty years.

I shone my flashlight into the darkness.

Rows of shelves. Metal racks.

And on the racks, small, white bundles.

"Oh god," I whispered.

There were dozens of them. Wrapped in linen. Frozen solid.

The failures.

I walked down the aisle, my heart breaking with every step. I looked at the tags on the bundles.

*Subject 4. 1990.*
*Subject 7. 1992.*
*Subject 15. 1998.*

"She kept trying," Martha said, her voice shaking. "She kept trying to make the perfect heir."

"And she failed," I said. "Every time."

"Until Leo," Martha said.

"Leo isn't perfect," I said. "He's sick."

"He's sick because she made him sick," Martha said. "To keep him dependent."

We reached the end of the aisle. There was a small, wooden door. The coal chute.

"This is it," Martha said.

But before we could open it, a light flared behind us.

A spotlight.

"Going somewhere?" Edith's voice echoed through the frozen chamber.

I turned.

She stood at the entrance to the aisle, silhouetted by the light. She was holding a gun.

And next to her, held by the collar of his hospital gown, was Leo.

He was awake. He looked terrified.

"Let him go," I said.

"He's mine," Edith said. "He's my masterpiece."

She pressed the gun to his head.

"Drop the file, Sarah. Or I'll add him to the collection."

I looked at the file in my hand. The proof.

I looked at Leo.

I looked at the coal chute.

And then I looked at the bundles on the shelves. The frozen, silent witnesses.

"You can't kill him," I said. "You need him."

"I have the others," Edith said, nodding to the ceiling. "The new batch. They just need time."

"Time you don't have," I said.

I threw the file.

Not at her.

At the shelf next to her.

The heavy metal rack, unbalanced by the weight of thirty years of ice, tipped.

"No!" Edith screamed.

She shoved Leo away, trying to catch the shelf. Trying to save her collection.

It crashed down on top of her.

A cascade of frozen bundles and twisted metal buried her.

Leo scrambled across the floor, sobbing.

I ran to him. I grabbed him.

"Come on," I said. "We're leaving."

I looked at the pile of debris. Edith's hand was sticking out. The gun lay just beyond her reach.

She was groaning. But she was pinned.

"Help me," she rasped.

I looked at her.

"No," I said.

I turned to Martha.

"Open the chute."