Chapter 8: The Children Who Never Came Home
The explosion echoed through the underground complex like rolling thunder.
Concrete dust swallowed the corridor.
Emergency lights flashed crimson across the walls as alarms screamed from every direction.
Detective Samuel Bennett threw an arm over Officer Jenna Morales, pulling her behind a reinforced laboratory door just as another section of ceiling collapsed.
Chunks of steel crashed onto the floor where they had been standing only seconds earlier.
Captain Melissa Grant grabbed her radio.
"Status report!"
Static.
Then scattered replies.
"Team Bravo, we're okay."
"Charlie team has one injured."
"The elevator is completely gone."
Bennett looked toward the burning shaft.
Their only known exit had disappeared beneath twisted steel and flames.
They were trapped.
Miles away, Emily sat upright in bed at the Children's Advocacy Center.
Her breathing was uneven.
Laura wrapped her daughter in a blanket.
"It was just a nightmare."
Emily slowly shook her head.
"No."
"They're crying again."
Laura frowned.
"Who is?"
Emily looked toward the rain-covered window.
"The children."
Back underground...
Fire suppression systems activated automatically.
Instead of water...
A white gas poured from vents in the ceiling.
Rhodes checked a nearby warning panel.
"Not poisonous."
"It's oxygen displacement foam."
Captain Grant nodded.
"They're trying to smother the fire."
The system worked.
Within minutes, the flames around the elevator shaft began to weaken.
But the shaft itself had collapsed.
No one was climbing out that way.
Rhodes hurried to the nearest computer terminal.
Miraculously, emergency backup power remained active.
"I've still got access."
His fingers raced across the keyboard.
The security network had survived.
Dozens of camera feeds appeared.
Most showed empty hallways.
Destroyed laboratories.
Storage rooms.
Then...
Camera 47.
A large underground dormitory.
Rows of small beds.
Tiny lockers.
Children's drawings taped to the walls.
Everything abandoned.
Officer Morales stared at the screen.
"This wasn't a laboratory."
Bennett whispered,
"It was a home."
The team reached the dormitory minutes later.
Silence greeted them.
Twenty-four beds.
Each carefully made.
Stuffed animals rested neatly on several pillows.
Tiny shoes lined one wall.
On a bulletin board hung colorful drawings made by children.
Most were ordinary.
Rainbows.
Dogs.
Birthday cakes.
Then Bennett noticed something strange.
Every drawing included the same symbol.
A blue bird.
Always in the corner.
Always watching.
Captain Grant opened one of the lockers.
Inside lay a faded photograph.
A little boy smiling beside a bicycle.
Written on the back:
Ethan Collins
Age 7
Officer Morales checked another locker.
Another photograph.
Another child.
Another name.
One after another.
Twenty-four lockers.
Twenty-four children.
No last names.
No addresses.
Just first names.
Ages ranging from five to twelve.
Rhodes finally accessed the facility's internal database.
The screen displayed a single heading.
PROJECT ECHO
Below it...
A list.
Twenty-four identification numbers.
Every one marked:
Transferred
No destination listed.
No dates.
Nothing else.
Transferred where?
Back in Fairfax...
Dr. Naomi Carter listened carefully as Emily drew another picture.
This time...
Not the Vale mansion.
Not Bunny.
Not her father.
She drew twenty-four small stick figures holding hands.
One stood apart from the others.
Dr. Carter asked gently,
"Who's that?"
Emily pointed.
"Me."
"And the others?"
"My friends."
Laura stared at the drawing.
"You never told me about these children."
Emily looked confused.
"I wasn't allowed."
Dr. Carter exchanged a concerned glance with Detective Bennett over a secure video call.
"Emily says they played together."
Bennett frowned.
"Where?"
Emily answered before anyone else could.
"The big room."
"The one with the blue bird."
Every officer underground slowly turned toward the bulletin board.
The blue bird.
Exactly as Emily described.
She had been here.
Morales carefully removed the bulletin board from the wall.
Something rattled behind it.
A hidden compartment.
Inside rested a small metal box.
No lock.
Just a handwritten note taped to the lid.
For Emily.
Bennett opened it slowly.
Inside were twenty-four folded paper cranes.
Each made from a different page of children's notebook paper.
Every crane carried a name.
Ethan.
Sophie.
Lucas.
Maya.
Noah.
Olivia.
Twenty-four names.
Nothing else.
At the bottom of the box lay one final envelope.
Daniel Harper's handwriting.
Bennett unfolded it.
If Emily brought you here, then she remembered.
These children are real.
Richard didn't choose them.
Neither did I.
Dr. Adrian Mercer called them "echoes."
I never learned exactly why.
I only know they vanished one by one.
I tried to stop it.
I failed.
If you still have time...
Find Ethan.
He escaped.
The room fell silent.
Captain Grant looked up immediately.
"Ethan."
"The photograph."
Morales grabbed the picture from Locker One.
Seven-year-old Ethan Collins smiled back at them.
If Daniel's letter was correct...
One child had survived.
Rhodes suddenly called from another computer.
"I found a personnel file."
He enlarged the screen.
Employee:
Victor Collins
Head of Security.
Bennett narrowed his eyes.
"Collins..."
He picked up Ethan's photograph again.
The boy's name read:
Ethan Collins.
Officer Morales looked from the photo to the computer.
"You think..."
Bennett nodded slowly.
"Victor wasn't just the head of security."
"He may have been Ethan's father."
At that exact moment, Captain Grant's radio crackled.
A dispatcher's urgent voice broke through the static.
"Captain!"
"We've got a development."
"Victor Collins just disappeared."
Grant's expression hardened.
"When?"
"Security footage shows he left Fairfax twelve minutes before the warehouse explosion."
Bennett's grip tightened around Ethan's photograph.
Victor hadn't run from the investigation.
He had run toward something.
Or someone.
And if Ethan Collins was still alive...
May you like
Victor was almost certainly trying to reach him first.
End of Chapter 8
