Chapter 9 - catherine’s bargain
“Stop the transfer!” Elena shouted.
Catherine remained calm on the screen.
“I cannot.”
“You activated it.”
“Yes.”
“Then shut it down.”
“If I interrupt the process now, Noah’s nervous system could suffer permanent damage.”
Inside the mansion chamber, Noah twisted against the platform while Lucía held his shoulders. Blue light pulsed around him in measured waves.
Michael studied the data.
“His heart rate is rising.”
“How long?” Elena asked.
“Until the transfer finishes? Six minutes.”
“What happens at the end?”
“I don’t know.”
Catherine answered from the monitor.
“He will wake.”
“That isn’t an answer,” Elena said.
“He will retain no conscious memory of the process.”
“But will he be himself?”
Catherine hesitated.
Elena stepped closer to the screen.
“Will my son still be himself?”
“He should be.”
The words should be ignited something inside her.
Arturo moved toward the terminal.
“You always valued the project more than the children,” he told Catherine.
Catherine’s eyes shifted to him.
“And you always valued ownership more than truth.”
“You disappeared.”
“You imprisoned me.”
“I searched for you for years.”
“You searched for the archive.”
Arturo’s face tightened.
The old marriage came alive between them—not as love, but as two competing versions of history sharpened over decades.
Elena had no patience for either.
“Why do you need Noah?” she asked.
Catherine looked back at her daughter.
“Daniel discovered that the archive had been compromised before his death. Someone copied the research and began creating private subjects.”
“Who?”
“We believed it was Dr. Voss.”
“Believed?”
“Voss died six years ago.”
“So someone else continued.”
“Yes.”
Elena thought of the forged transfers and the compound hidden in the mud.
“Brooke?”
“Brooke is involved, but she is not leading it.”
“Then who is?”
Catherine looked away.
The transfer timer dropped below five minutes.
“I will tell you when Noah is safe.”
“You will tell me now.”
“Not over an unsecured connection.”
Michael examined the signal path.
“She’s routing through several satellites. I can’t identify her location.”
Arturo laughed bitterly.
“She learned from Daniel.”
Catherine’s gaze hardened. “Daniel learned from me.”
Sofia stepped closer to the screen.
“Grandma?”
Catherine’s expression softened for the first time.
“Sofia.”
“You knew I was alive?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you come for me after my parents died?”
Pain crossed Catherine’s face.
“I tried.”
“Grandpa raised me.”
“I know.”
“He told me you were dead.”
“I know.”
“Everyone lies,” Sofia whispered.
Catherine did not deny it.
A warning appeared on the terminal.
SUBJECT DISTRESS INCREASING.
Elena watched Noah’s hands claw against the platform.
“Michael, help him.”
“I can lower the intensity, but the system requires local authorization.”
“From whom?”
“Catherine.”
Elena faced the screen.
“Reduce it.”
“I cannot risk corrupting the transfer.”
“He is in pain.”
“This archive contains evidence of illegal trials involving at least twenty-three children.”
The room fell silent.
Catherine continued.
“Some may still be alive. The locations, medical identities, and treatment protocols are encrypted. Noah’s marker is the only key Daniel left.”
“So you are hurting one child to save others.”
“I am making a choice no mother should have to make.”
“You are not his mother.”
“No. I’m yours.”
Elena leaned toward the camera.
“Then act like it.”
For several seconds, Catherine said nothing.
Finally, she entered a command.
The blue light around Noah dimmed. His body relaxed slightly.
TRANSFER EXTENDED: ELEVEN MINUTES.
Michael exhaled.
“What did you do?”
“I reduced the intensity,” Catherine said. “It will take longer.”
A sharp alarm sounded behind her.
She looked toward something outside the camera frame.
“They found me.”
“Who?”
Catherine reached for a drive on her desk.
“Elena, listen carefully. The auditor’s email was not sent by Daniel Price.”
Elena frowned. “I hired him.”
“No. You hired a man using Daniel Price’s identity.”
“What is his real name?”
The lights behind Catherine went out.
She continued speaking in darkness.
“His real name is Noah Lawson.”
Brooke’s dead son.
“That’s impossible,” Sofia whispered.
“He did not die in the first activation,” Catherine said. “Daniel smuggled him out and falsified his death. Noah Lawson is thirty years old now.”
Elena’s mind raced.
Brooke had been twenty when Daniel died. The timeline did not fit unless the child had been born years earlier and hidden from the family.
Catherine seemed to read her confusion.
“Brooke was not his mother.”
“Then who was?”
Catherine looked toward Arturo.
“I was.”
Arturo staggered backward.
Sofia stared at them both.
Catherine spoke quickly.
“Noah Lawson is Daniel’s half brother, created from my genetic material during the earliest trial. Brooke was assigned as his caretaker and later claimed him as her child.”
“Why did Daniel call him his son?” Elena asked.
“To protect the truth.”
A door crashed open behind Catherine.
Armed figures entered the dark control room.
Catherine grabbed the drive and looked into the camera.
“The man calling himself Daniel Price has manipulated every transaction. He wanted you to find the mountain. He wanted Noah connected.”
“Why?”
“Because once the archive transfers through your son, Noah Lawson can extract it remotely.”
The video shook as someone seized Catherine.
Before the feed ended, she shouted one final warning.
“Do not let the transfer reach one hundred percent!”
The screen went black.
The progress indicator read 62%.
Michael reached for the emergency controls.
Arturo raised his gun.
“If you stop it now, the child could die.”
“If we let it finish,” Elena said, “someone takes the archive.”
A message appeared beneath the progress bar.
REMOTE RECIPIENT CONNECTED: DANIEL PRICE.
Then the terminal’s camera activated.
A man’s face appeared.
The auditor Elena had met three weeks earlier smiled at her.
May you like
“Thank you for bringing me my brother’s key,” he said.
👉 With Noah trapped inside the transfer and the false auditor stealing the archive, Elena had less than five minutes to choose between her son’s life and the identities of twenty-three missing children.
