9. The Current

The mainland appeared on the horizon as a thin gray line, slowly thickening into the jagged skyline of Corvus City. Elara stood at the bow of the Resolute, her borrowed military fatigues stiff with salt spray, her eyes fixed on the approaching shore. Behind her, somewhere in the ship's hold, the survivors of Aethelgard were being prepared for transfer to a medical facility on land. The living and the dead, the broken and the barely mended, all of them carried by the same gray sea that had once been their prison wall.

Maeve appeared beside her, wrapped in a wool blanket despite the mild air. Her bruised face was beginning to heal, the swelling around her split lip receding to reveal the young woman beneath. But her eyes were different now. Harder. Older. The eyes of someone who had seen things that could not be unseen.

"They told me there will be reporters at the dock," Maeve said quietly. "Captain Vance says the news has already spread. The story of Aethelgard is on every channel in Valoria."

"Good," Elara said. "That is what we want."

"Is it?" Maeve pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "I thought I wanted the world to know. I thought I wanted everyone to see what they did to us. But now that it is happening, I am not sure I can bear it. The questions. The photographs. The way they will look at us, like we are something broken. Something pitiable."

Elara turned to face her, and her expression was not unkind but it was firm, the expression of someone who had made a decision and would not be swayed from it. "Let them look," she said. "Let them pity us. Let them ask their questions and take their photographs. None of that matters. What matters is that they listen. What matters is that they believe. What matters is that the people who did this to us are held accountable."

"And if they are not?" Maeve asked. "If Thorne is right, and the powerful protect their own, and the evidence gets buried?"

Elara did not answer immediately. She looked back at the skyline of Corvus City, at the towers of glass and steel that rose from the shore like the spires of a cathedral. Somewhere in those towers, the clients of the Order were going about their lives, unaware that their secrets were about to be dragged into the light. Politicians. Business leaders. Judges. People who had paid for custom-designed children, for black-market organs, for illegal genetic therapies. People who had built their fortunes and their families on the backs of women like Sorcha, like Maeve, like Elara herself.

"Then we make them accountable," she said finally. "We find another way. We do not stop until justice is done."

The Resolute docked at the Corvus City Naval Station just after noon. The pier was crowded with vehicles and personnel, a swarm of activity that seemed to pulse with a life of its own. Ambulances were waiting to transport the survivors to the city's main hospital. Military police stood in a cordon around the dock, holding back a crowd of journalists and photographers and ordinary citizens who had gathered to witness the arrival of the women from Aethelgard.

Captain Vance met Elara and Maeve at the gangplank. She had changed into a fresh uniform, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, her face composed and professional. But there was a tightness around her eyes that betrayed the strain of the past twenty-four hours.

"The Investigative Commission has taken custody of the data relay," she said, without preamble. "They have also taken custody of Jasper Thorne. He is being debriefed at a secure location. I am told he is cooperating fully."

"Cooperating?" Elara said. "He is the one who helped us. He is the reason we got out."

"I know," Captain Vance said. "But he also has knowledge of the Order's operations that goes back years. His mother was a vessel. He has been investigating the Order for a long time. The Commission wants to know everything he knows."

Elara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the sea wind. Thorne was being debriefed, which meant he was being questioned, which meant he was being held. Whether as a witness or a suspect, she could not tell.

"I want to see him," she said.

"That is not possible right now," Captain Vance said. "The Commission's investigation is classified. No one outside the investigative team is permitted contact with the witnesses."

"Witnesses?" Maeve said, her voice sharp. "Is that what we are? Witnesses? Not victims? Not survivors?"

Captain Vance's expression softened, but only slightly. "You are whatever you choose to be," she said. "But right now, in the eyes of the law, you are witnesses. And your testimony will be crucial to the prosecution of the Order's leadership."

She gestured toward the waiting ambulances. "The medical team is ready for you. You will be taken to Saint Dymphna's Hospital for evaluation and treatment. After that, representatives from the Commission will meet with you to take your statements."

Elara wanted to argue, wanted to demand to see Thorne, wanted to refuse to be shuffled from one institution to another like cargo on a conveyor belt. But she was exhausted, and Maeve was shivering beside her, and the crowd of journalists on the pier was growing louder and more insistent. So she nodded and followed Captain Vance down the gangplank and into the waiting ambulance.

Saint Dymphna's Hospital was a vast, gray complex on the north side of Corvus City, its corridors lined with fluorescent lights that reminded Elara too much of Aethelgard. She was given a private room on the third floor, a small, sterile space with a window that looked out over the city's industrial district. The medical staff were kind but brisk, checking her vital signs and drawing blood and asking questions about her medical history that she answered with as few words as possible.

She had been at the hospital for perhaps two hours when the first visitor arrived. Not a representative from the Commission, as she had expected, but a woman she had never seen before. She was tall and angular, with short dark hair and sharp, intelligent eyes that seemed to miss nothing. She wore a dark suit that was clearly expensive but deliberately understated, and she carried a leather briefcase that she set on the foot of Elara's bed.

"My name is Lena Petrova," she said, extending a hand. "I am a journalist with the Corvus City Chronicle. I have been investigating the Holy Order of the Eternal Cradle for the past three years."

Elara did not take her hand. "How did you get in here? The hospital is supposed to be closed to the press."

Lena smiled, a small, tight smile that did not reach her eyes. "I have my sources. And I have something that I think you will want to see."

She opened her briefcase and pulled out a folder, thick with papers and photographs. She spread them on the bed in front of Elara, one by one. Financial records. Corporate filings. Photographs of men and women in expensive clothes, attending galas and fundraisers and private dinners. And at the center of it all, a photograph of a man with silver hair and a cold, patrician face.

"Governor Silas Crowe," Lena said, tapping the photograph. "The most powerful man in Valoria. He has been governor for twelve years. He is rumored to be planning a run for the presidency. And for the past decade, he has been one of the Order's most loyal clients."

Elara stared at the photograph. The man's face was handsome in a cold, sculpted way, his eyes pale and expressionless, his smile perfectly calibrated to convey warmth without sincerity. She had seen faces like his before, on the television screens in the communal kitchen back in the Fourteenth Ward, on the campaign posters that plastered the walls of every public building in Corvus City. The face of power. The face of privilege. The face of a man who had never been told no.

"What do you mean, a client?" Elara asked.

"I mean he has purchased three children from the Order in the past eight years," Lena said. "All of them custom-designed to his specifications. Gender, eye color, genetic profile. His wife, Gwendolyn Crowe, is known for her philanthropic work with children's charities. The irony, I am sure, is not lost on you."

Three children. Elara thought about the vessels who had carried those children, the women who had been inseminated and monitored and eventually delivered of infants they were never allowed to hold. Were they still on the island? Were they in the Paradise Wing, their bodies hollowed out and harvested? Or were they among the survivors, the women who were even now being treated in this very hospital?

"There is more," Lena said. "The financial records that your data relay uncovered show that Governor Crowe is not just a client of the Order. He is a silent partner. He has been receiving a percentage of the Order's profits for years. The surrogacy fees, the organ sales, the stem cell therapies—he gets a cut of all of it. And in return, he has used his political influence to protect the Order from investigation and prosecution."

Elara felt the world tilt around her, the same sensation she had felt in the Paradise Wing when Doctor Voss had injected her with Serum 17. The governor. The most powerful man in Valoria. A silent partner in the Order's operations. It was almost too big to comprehend.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

Lena closed her briefcase and looked at Elara with an expression that was difficult to read. "Because the Investigative Commission is not going to release the full contents of that data relay," she said. "I have sources inside the Commission. They are already under pressure from the governor's office to redact the most sensitive information. The names of the high-profile clients. The financial ties to the administration. If the Commission has its way, the only people who will face justice are the ones on the island. Mother Vale. Doctor Voss. The orderlies and attendants. The small fish. The big fish will swim away."

"No," Elara said. "I will not let that happen."

"I was hoping you would say that." Lena reached into her briefcase and pulled out a small recording device, no larger than a thumbnail. "I want to tell your story, Elara. All of it. From the day you saw the advertisement to the moment you stepped off the Resolute. I want to publish it in the Chronicle, on the front page, with your name and your face and your words. And I want to include everything I know about the Order's clients, including Governor Crowe."

"Why?" Elara asked. "Why do you care? You are a journalist. You could write this story without me. You already have the documents, the photographs, the sources."

Lena was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, stripped of its professional polish. "Three years ago, my sister disappeared. Her name was Katya. She was nineteen years old. She saw an advertisement for a charitable organization that promised housing and compensation and spiritual fulfillment. She went to a processing center in the Seventh Ward and she never came home."

She looked at Elara, and her sharp, intelligent eyes were bright with a grief that she had clearly been carrying for a very long time. "I have been looking for her ever since. I have followed the trail of the Order across Valoria, from the slums of Corvus City to the wealthy enclaves of the capital. I have compiled files on every client, every financier, every politician who has ever taken money from Mother Vale. But I have never been able to prove what happened to the women who disappeared. Not definitively. Not until now."

Elara thought about Sorcha's records, the list of names and dates and destinations. She thought about the women in the Paradise Wing, the thirty-seven vessels who had been harvested and hollowed out and left to die. Was one of them Katya? Had Lena's sister been among the women that the military doctors had tried and failed to save?

"I do not know if your sister is alive," Elara said. "But I can tell you what happened on that island. I can tell you what they did to us. And if it helps bring down the people who were responsible, then I will tell it to anyone who will listen."

Lena nodded, and her smile was a sharp, fierce thing, the smile of a hunter who had finally cornered her prey. "Then let us get to work," she said.

They worked through the afternoon and into the evening, Lena asking questions and Elara answering them, the recording device capturing every word. Elara told her about the intake ward and the orchid-scented disinfectant, about Doctor Voss and her clinical classification of "Breeder Grade A," about the insemination procedure and the moment she had felt something foreign take root inside her body. She told her about Maeve and the locket with the photograph of her stolen daughter, about Sorcha and the records she had kept for three years, about the Paradise Wing and the serum that induced conscious paralysis and the women who were harvested for their organs.

And she told her about Jasper Thorne, the lawyer who had come to Aethelgard to find the truth about his mother, who had given her the data relay and helped her escape and who was now being held by the Investigative Commission in a secure location that no one was allowed to visit.

When she was finished, the sun had set and the room was dark, lit only by the glow of the streetlights outside the window. Lena switched off the recording device and sat back in her chair, her face pale and drawn.

"This is worse than I imagined," she said quietly. "Much worse."

"Will you publish it?" Elara asked.

"Yes," Lena said. "But I need to verify everything first. The documents, the sources, the testimony from the other survivors. If I publish without verification, the governor's office will dismiss it as fabrication, and the story will be dead before it ever reaches the public."

"How long will that take?"

"A few days. Maybe a week. I have a team at the Chronicle who can help me. But you need to understand, Elara. Once this story is published, your life will never be the same. The governor and his allies will try to discredit you. They will try to destroy you. They may even try to hurt you. Are you prepared for that?"

Elara thought about Sorcha, dying in her bed in the Paradise Wing, her last words a whisper of hope that the records would be found. She thought about Maeve, her young face bruised and battered, her daughter stolen from her before she had even been allowed to hold her. She thought about the thirty-seven women in the Paradise Wing, the ones who had been harvested and hollowed out, the ones who would never wake up. And she thought about the baby growing inside her, the life that had been forced upon her, the child she had never wanted and did not know if she could love.

"I am prepared," she said.

Lena stood up and extended her hand. This time, Elara took it. "Then I will be in touch," Lena said. "Stay safe. Stay hidden. And do not trust anyone. Not the Commission. Not the military. Not even the other survivors. The Order has allies everywhere. And they will do anything to keep their secrets buried."

She left, and Elara was alone again, alone with the darkness and the silence and the weight of everything she had said and everything she had not said. She lay back on the hospital bed and stared at the ceiling, her hand resting on her belly, where the beginnings of a new life were stirring.

She did not know what the future held. She did not know if Lena's story would bring down Governor Crowe, or if it would be buried by the same forces that had protected the Order for thirty years. She did not know if she would ever see Thorne again, or if he would be swallowed by the machinery of the investigation. She did not know if she would ever be free of the shadow of Aethelgard, or if she would carry it with her for the rest of her life.

But she knew one thing. She was no longer Vessel 247. She was no longer Breeder Grade A. She was Elara Sennett, and she was going to make sure that the world knew what had happened on that island.

And as she drifted toward sleep, she heard a sound that made her sit bolt upright in the darkness. The door to her room was opening, slowly, silently, and a figure was slipping through the gap. A figure in a dark suit, with pale blue eyes and dark hair slicked back from a high forehead.

"Thorne," she breathed.

But the figure shook its head, and when it stepped into the dim light from the window, Elara saw that it was not Jasper Thorne at all. It was someone younger, someone with sharper features and a harder expression, someone whose pale blue eyes held none of the warmth that she had seen in Thorne's.

"My name is Dorian Thorne," the man said. "Jasper is my brother. And we need to talk."