Chapter 5 - THE TRACKER BENEATH HIS SKIN
The train had been turned into a hidden medical station.
Portable monitors glowed against the windows. Emergency kits covered the seats. A surgical lamp had been bolted to the ceiling, swaying slightly as the dark tunnel breathed around them.
Dr. Lena Ortiz moved with the calm precision of someone who had done terrible work under worse pressure.
"Place him here," she said.
Ethan screamed the moment she reached for him.
Emily sat on the floor instead, holding him in her lap. "He stays with me."
Ortiz glanced at Adrian.
Adrian nodded. "Do it her way."
The doctor removed the bandage. Beneath it, Emily saw a stitched incision too clean to be accidental. Someone had cut into a toddler's forehead with deliberate hands.
Adrian turned away for half a second, then forced himself to look back.
"You were supposed to protect him," Emily said.
"I know," he answered.
There was no excuse in his voice. Only a wound.
Ortiz passed a scanner over the incision. A red dot appeared on the monitor.
"Transmitter," she said. "Possibly more. There is a pressure trigger. If I pull it incorrectly, it detonates."
Mason looked toward the dark tunnel. "Can they hear us through it?"
"Assume yes."
Emily bent close to Ethan. "Look at me, sweetheart. Not the lights. Not the doctor. Just me."
He clutched the silver airplane.
"Where does it fly?" she whispered.
His lips trembled. "Cloud."
"That's right. Above all the buildings."
Ortiz numbed the skin and opened the stitches. Ethan shook but kept his eyes locked on Emily. Adrian knelt beside them, one hand hovering uselessly near his son's foot.
Headlights appeared down the tunnel.
A maintenance vehicle approached, carrying armed men.
"How long?" Cole asked.
"Sixty seconds," Ortiz said.
"You have thirty."
Gunfire erupted. Bullets struck the train windows, turning them white with cracks. Mason and Cole fired from opposite doors. Adrian stood between the attackers and his child with a fury that had finally found a direction.
Ortiz exposed the capsule.
It was black, smaller than a grain of rice.
The monitor began to scream.
"Signal activation," she said.
Emily held Ethan tighter. "Clouds, remember? Tell me what color."
"White," he breathed.
"Good boy."
Ortiz removed the capsule and dropped it into a lead container. She slammed the lid shut.
"Move!"
They ran into the next car as the container exploded. The blast destroyed the medical bay, blew out the windows, and hurled smoke through the train.
The maintenance vehicle crashed alongside them. Masked men boarded through the smoke.
Emily saw the driver cab at the far end.
"Can this thing move?"
"Not without central power," Mason said.
"Maybe it just needs brakes released."
She had photographed transit workers during a strike, listening while engineers complained about emergency systems nobody respected until disaster. She found the manual battery control, flipped two switches, and pulled the red brake release.
The train groaned.
Then it began rolling down the sloped tunnel.
Adrian jumped aboard at the last second. Gunmen fired from behind as the train vanished into darkness.
Ortiz examined Ethan again once they were clear.
"The tracker is gone," she said. "He needs rest, antibiotics, and a world that stops trying to murder him."
"We are working on the third part," Emily replied.
Ortiz revealed that Charlotte had warned her three days earlier. If Cerberus began, she had said, Ethan would be the key because he carried evidence no adult could be trusted to hold.
"Where is Charlotte?" Adrian asked.
"Alive," Ortiz said. "According to an intercepted transmission, she is being held at the National Emergency Operations Center. Rourke plans to announce the President's death tonight."
"Is the President dead?" Emily asked.
"No," Ortiz said. "That is the problem."
The train slowed near a lit platform. Dozens of soldiers waited with rifles.
Cole raised his gun.
Ortiz stopped him. "National Guard. I called their commander."
A woman in combat uniform stepped forward.
"Colonel Sarah Bennett," she said. "Dr. Ortiz says you have evidence against the Vice President."
Before Adrian could answer, Bennett's radio crackled.
"All units, Emily Carter has been identified as the terrorist responsible for the attack. She is armed, dangerous, and holding the President's grandson hostage."
Every soldier looked at Emily.
On the platform screens, her press photo appeared beneath a red banner.
WANTED FOR TERRORISM.
May you like
The city had finally been told whom to fear.
And the face they were shown was hers.
