Chapter 8 - The Room Beneath the HouseWe escaped through the attic window.
Linda led us to her car.
For ten minutes, no one spoke.
Then I asked the question that had been pounding inside my skull.
“Who is my father?”
Linda stared at the road.
“You're not ready.”
“I am now.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
She gripped the steering wheel.
“Your father built the first version of Project Lullaby.”
I felt sick.
“What did it do?”
“It identified children who could be manipulated.”
“For what?”
“Control.”
The word sat between us.
Emily looked at me.
“What did Daniel inherit?”
Linda didn't answer.
I did.
“A genetic marker?”
Linda's silence told me enough.
We drove for another hour.
Then we reached my grandfather's abandoned farmhouse outside Rockford.
I hadn't been there in nineteen years.
The house looked exactly as I remembered.
Old.
Gray.
Dead.
Linda unlocked the front door.
Inside, dust covered everything.
She walked to the basement.
At the far wall was a wooden cabinet.
She removed a painting.
Behind it was a steel keyhole.
I inserted the key she gave me.
The wall clicked.
Then moved.
A narrow staircase disappeared beneath the floor.
Emily looked at me.
“You knew this existed?”
“No.”
Linda entered first.
We followed.
The basement was unlike anything above us.
White walls.
Steel doors.
Old monitors.
Servers.
Files.
Thousands of them.
Pictures of babies.
Children.
Families.
My stomach turned.
Emily walked toward a wall covered with photographs.
Then she stopped.
Her hand covered her mouth.
I stepped beside her.
There was a photograph of me as a child.
Beside it was another photograph.
My mother.
And beside that...
A man I had never seen before.
Underneath the photograph was a label.
SUBJECT 001.
Emily pointed.
“That's him.”
“Who?”
She whispered:
“My father.”
Linda shook her head.
“No.”
Emily turned.
“What?”
Linda stared at the picture.
“That was your father.”
I looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn't Daniel's father.”
“Then why is he beside me?”
Linda's face collapsed.
“Because your father's experiments began with you.”
Silence.
I stared at my childhood photograph.
A tiny boy.
Five years old.
Smiling.
Unaware.
Below the picture was a line of text.
MEMORY RESPONSE: SUCCESSFUL.
Emily grabbed my hand.
Then a monitor suddenly flickered on.
An old video began playing.
A man appeared on screen.
He looked straight into the camera.
It was the man from the photograph.
May you like
And he said:
“Daniel, if you're watching this, it means they finally found your son.”
