Dr. Isolde Vane did not speak into the telephone. She listened, her head tilted slightly, her eyes never leaving Laila's face. The alarm continued to pulse through the building, a steady electronic heartbeat that seemed to grow louder with each passing second.
Then, very deliberately, she set the receiver back in its cradle.
"It seems," she said, "that Director Vance would prefer to handle this personally. He is en route from the mainland. He should arrive within the hour."
Noah's hand tightened on Laila's arm. "The door. Can you open it from this side?"
Before Laila could answer, Dr. Vane laughed. It was a dry sound, like leaves skittering across stone. "The medical wing is designed to keep people in, not out. Once the lockdown is triggered, every exit seals automatically. The only person who can override it is the Director himself." She picked up her clipboard and resumed her notes, as though the intrusion had already been resolved. "I suggest you make yourselves comfortable. Sir Lennox is not a man who appreciates being rushed."
Laila looked at the girls in the beds. They had not moved during the exchange. Their eyes remained open, fixed on the ceiling, their chests rising and falling with the shallow rhythm of the deeply sedated. The IV drips continued their steady pulse, clear liquid traveling down tubes into veins.
"What are you giving them?" Laila asked.
Dr. Vane glanced up. "A compound called Somneril. It induces a state of compliant wakefulness. The patients are conscious—they can see, hear, and in some cases understand—but they cannot initiate voluntary movement. It makes them easier to manage during the observation phase."
"Observation for what?"
"The Crown of Flowers Initiative is a research program, Miss Adley. I would have thought that was obvious." Dr. Vane set down her clipboard and walked to the nearest bed, where a girl with dark braids lay motionless. "These subjects have completed their operational utility. They are no longer viable for deployment in the field. But they still have value. We study them—their psychological deterioration, their physiological responses to prolonged stress, their neurological adaptation to trauma. The data we collect informs the conditioning protocols for future cohorts."
She spoke with the detached precision of a laboratory technician describing cell cultures. Laila felt her stomach turn.
"You're experimenting on them."
"We are conducting research. The terminology matters." Dr. Vane checked the IV drip, adjusted the flow rate with a small dial. "The Porcelain Society produces assets. But every asset has a shelf life. When they break—and they always break, eventually—they come here. We study why. We learn. We improve."
"How many?"
"Subjects? At present, twenty-three. We have capacity for thirty." Dr. Vane moved to the next bed. "The Cerulean Star brings new arrivals twice a month. The old subjects are transferred to the disposal facility on the northern end of the island when we have extracted all usable data."
Laila thought of Mina. Of the letter. Of the black car. "Where is Mina Delacroix?"
Dr. Vane paused. She turned, and her expression had shifted—not to sympathy, but to something that resembled professional curiosity. "Delacroix. Yes. Subject 47-C. She arrived three days ago. Unusually high resistance to Somneril—we had to double her dosage. Sir Lennox was quite interested in her file. He said she had been flagged for Phase Three before she became problematic."
"Is she here? In this room?"
"She was. She was transferred to the observation wing this morning for psychological evaluation. Sir Lennox wanted a full workup before he decided on her final disposition." Dr. Vane glanced at the clock on the wall. "The evaluation should be complete by now. If you're very lucky, you might see her before he arrives."
Laila stepped toward Dr. Vane, and something in her movement made the older woman take a step back. "Take me to her."
"I can't. The observation wing is on the other side of the facility, and the lockdown has sealed all internal doors as well as external ones."
"You said Sir Lennox can override the lockdown."
"Yes."
"And he's not here yet."
Dr. Vane's eyes narrowed. "What are you suggesting?"
Laila turned to Noah. "You said you bypassed the external lock with a signal replicator. Can it work on internal doors?"
Noah was already reaching for his case of tools. "The internal doors use the same system. But the replicator needs a valid keycard signal to copy. The last person to use the door would have to have passed through within the last hour, or the signal degrades."
Laila looked at Dr. Vane. "When was the last time someone went through that door?"
The doctor was silent for a long moment. Then, very slowly, she reached into the pocket of her white coat and withdrew a keycard. "Twenty minutes ago. I was checking on Subject 47-C."
Noah held out his hand. "Give me the card."
Dr. Vane did not move. "If I help you, Sir Lennox will know. He knows everything that happens in this facility."
"He's going to know anyway," Laila said. "We're here. We've seen what you're doing. When he arrives, he'll have to decide what to do with us. Do you think he'll let you continue your research once he knows there's been a security breach?"
The doctor's face went very still. Laila could see her calculating, weighing risks, measuring loyalties. Dr. Isolde Vane was not a true believer, Laila realized. She was a survivor, the kind of person who had attached herself to power because it was safer than opposing it. But survival instincts could be redirected.
"Sir Lennox values my research," Dr. Vane said. "He funds this facility from his personal accounts. The NSD doesn't even know the Thornwood Institute exists—it's off their books entirely. He needs me."
"Then he needs you more than he needs two students who wandered into the wrong building." Laila held out her hand. "The card."
Dr. Vane looked at Laila's outstretched palm. Then, with the air of a woman making a decision she would regret, she handed over the keycard.
"The observation wing is through the door at the end of the ward," she said. "Subject 47-C is in Room 12. But I should warn you—she may not recognize you. The Somneril and the evaluation procedures can cause temporary cognitive impairment."
Noah pressed the keycard against his signal replicator. The device hummed, numbers flickering across its screen. After a moment, it emitted a soft chime.
"Signal copied," he said. "It should open the internal doors. But it won't work on the external exits. For those, we'll need Sir Lennox's personal override."
"Then we'll have to wait for him."
Laila walked toward the door at the end of the ward, Noah following close behind. She paused at the threshold and looked back at Dr. Vane.
"If you warn him we're here before we reach the observation wing, I'll make sure the International Oversight Commission knows exactly what kind of research you've been conducting."
Dr. Vane said nothing. She returned to her clipboard, her pen scratching across the paper, but Laila could see the tremor in her hands.
The observation wing was darker than the medical ward, its corridors lit only by dim red emergency lights. The walls were lined with doors, each marked with a number and a small observation window. Laila passed Room 1, Room 2, Room 3—glancing through each window as she went, seeing girls in various states of consciousness, some pacing, some curled on beds, some simply standing motionless in the corners of their cells.
Room 12 was at the end of the corridor. Laila pressed her face to the observation window and felt her heart stop.
Mina was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. She was thinner than Laila remembered—much thinner, her cheekbones sharp, her wrists bony where they emerged from the sleeves of a gray institutional gown. Her hair, which had always been her pride, was tangled and unwashed. But her eyes, when they lifted to meet Laila's, were not empty. They were furious.
"Took you long enough," Mina said, her voice muffled through the door.
Laila pressed her palm against the glass. "You're awake. Dr. Vane said they doubled your dosage."
"She did. I've been spitting it out when the orderlies aren't looking." Mina struggled to her feet, leaning heavily against the wall. "The food here is terrible, by the way. I'd kill for a decent meal."
Noah was already working on the door lock with his replicator. "The signal should work here. Give me a minute."
Mina looked through the glass at Laila, and for a moment her expression wavered. "They told me no one would come. They said I was alone. That my family had been told I died in an accident. That no one was looking for me."
"Sir Lennox lied."
"He lies about everything." Mina's voice hardened. "Laila, you need to know what this place is. What they're doing here. The Porcelain Society, the Crown of Flowers—it's all connected to something bigger. Something Vance has been building for years."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean the girls they take aren't just being sold or disposed of. They're being used as leverage. Every man who visits the Crown of Flowers—politicians, diplomats, businessmen—they're recorded. Photographed. Documented. Vance has files on half the powerful men in Gatland, and he uses what he knows to control them." Mina pressed her hand against the glass, mirroring Laila's. "This isn't about money. It's about power. The kind of power that doesn't need elections or laws."
Noah's replicator chimed. The door clicked open.
Mina stumbled through and collapsed into Laila's arms. She was trembling, her body thin and feverish, but her grip was strong. "There's a server room on the lower level. All the files are there—the photographs, the recordings, the blackmail material. If you can get to it, you can expose everything."
"Where is the lower level?"
"Beneath the medical wing. There's a staircase behind the nurses' station. But it's guarded." Mina pulled back and looked at Laila with desperate intensity. "And there's something else. Something worse. The girls who are too broken to be useful—the ones who can't be controlled with drugs or threats—they're not disposed of here on the island. They're shipped out. I heard the orderlies talking about it. There's a facility somewhere in Tarawa, a place called the Westhaven Center. That's where they send the ones they can't use anymore."
"Westhaven," Laila repeated. The name was unfamiliar.
"It's an orphanage. At least, that's what the official records call it. But it's not an orphanage. It's a breeding facility. They use the girls to produce more assets—children who can be raised from infancy to be compliant, to be perfect operatives. It's been running for decades, Laila. Generations of children, all part of the same system."
Laila felt the floor tilt beneath her. She thought of Elara Thorne's words in the greenhouse: When you grow up in Tarawa, when you've seen what I've seen, you'll believe anything that promises a way out. She thought of Mr. Kellan's daughter, who had disappeared thirty-two years ago and never been heard from again. She thought of the list in Mina's handwriting, the fifteen names, each one a life that had been consumed by the machine Sir Lennox Vance had built.
"We have to get to the server room," she said. "We have to get the files."
"We can't," Noah said. "The alarm is already sounding. Vance is on his way. If we go deeper into the building, we'll be trapped."
"If we leave without the files, Vance will destroy them. He'll move the girls, wipe the servers, and by the time anyone comes to investigate, there will be nothing left but an empty building."
Noah was silent for a moment. Then he said, "The server room will have its own security. I can try to bypass it, but I'll need time. And if the guards find us before I'm finished—"
"I'll deal with the guards," Mina said.
Laila looked at her. "You can barely stand."
"I've been lying in a bed for three days being pumped full of sedatives. I'm angry, Laila. I'm angry and I'm tired and I want to hurt someone. Let me hurt someone."
The red emergency lights flickered. From somewhere above them, Laila heard the sound of a helicopter approaching—the distinctive thump of rotors cutting through the predawn air.
"He's here," Noah said. "We have maybe ten minutes before he reaches this wing."
"Then we'd better move fast." Laila turned to Mina. "The nurses' station. Where is it?"
"This way." Mina started down the corridor, her bare feet silent on the linoleum floor, her stride steadier than Laila had expected. The anger seemed to be burning through whatever sedatives remained in her system.
They reached the nurses' station—a circular desk in the center of a junction between four corridors—and found it empty. The medical staff had apparently retreated to safer parts of the facility when the alarm began. Beyond the station, a heavy steel door was marked with a sign: LOWER LEVEL—AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY.
Noah knelt beside the door and began working on the lock. Laila and Mina stood guard, watching the corridors for approaching security. The helicopter sound had stopped—Sir Lennox must have landed on the roof, must be descending into the building at this very moment.
"How many guards are in the facility?" Laila asked.
"At night, maybe a dozen," Mina said. "More when a shipment is due. The Cerulean Star is scheduled to arrive tomorrow with new subjects."
"We can't leave the girls here. The ones in the medical wing."
"We won't." Mina's voice was flat and certain. "When we get those files, we bring this whole place down. Everyone Vance has ever threatened, everyone he's blackmailed—they'll all have a reason to turn on him. He won't survive it."
The lock clicked. Noah pushed the door open, revealing a narrow staircase descending into darkness.
"Stay here," Laila told Mina. "If anyone comes, make noise. Buy us as much time as you can."
Mina nodded. She picked up a heavy glass paperweight from the nurses' station and weighed it in her palm. "I've got this."
Laila and Noah descended the stairs, the darkness closing around them. At the bottom, another corridor, another door. This one was thicker than the others, with a biometric scanner mounted beside it.
"Retinal scan," Noah said. "I can't bypass this with the replicator. It needs Vance's eye."
"Or someone with the same clearance." Laila thought of Dr. Vane, still in the medical wing, still taking notes on her clipboard. "She said Sir Lennox funds this facility personally. She must have access to the servers."
"We can't go back up. Vance will be in the building by now."
"Then we wait."
"For what?"
"Vance is coming here. To the server room. It's the most secure part of the facility—if he thinks we're a threat, he'll want to protect the data first." Laila looked at the retinal scanner. "He'll open the door for us."
"Laila, that's insane. He'll have guards with him. He'll have weapons."
"Then we need to be ready."
She looked around the corridor and saw, against one wall, a maintenance cart loaded with cleaning supplies. She pulled it closer, examining its contents—bottles of bleach, ammonia, industrial solvents.
"Get behind the cart," she said. "When Vance opens the door, I'll distract him. You slip inside and start downloading the files."
"And if he doesn't fall for the distraction?"
Laila picked up a bottle of bleach and unscrewed the cap. "Then we improvise."
Footsteps echoed from the top of the stairs. Heavy, deliberate, the stride of a man who had never needed to hurry. Sir Lennox Vance was coming down.
Laila pressed herself against the wall beside the door and waited.
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!