Chapter 2 - FLOOR B2The gunshot never came.
Luca moved faster.
He slammed Mara against the elevator wall and fired first.
The stranger ducked.
The bullet struck the ceiling.
“Run!” Luca shouted.
Mara bolted into the corridor.
The air smelled like dust, metal, and something faintly chemical.
She heard two more shots behind her.
Then footsteps.
Fast.
She turned a corner and nearly collided with a steel door marked:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Luca caught up.
“Open it.”
“How?”
“There's a keypad.”
“No code.”
He pulled the black ledger from his jacket.
Mara stared at him.
“You brought the ledger?”
“I bring what people kill for.”
He flipped through the pages.
Then stopped.
“2047.”
He entered the number.
The door unlocked.
They rushed inside.
The corridor beyond was enormous.
Concrete walls.
Old fluorescent lights.
Rows of metal filing cabinets.
A wall-mounted clock that had stopped at 11:47.
Mara slowly turned.
“What is this?”
Luca didn't answer.
He was staring at a wall covered in photographs.
Some were old.
Some were recent.
Every photograph had a name beneath it.
Mara walked toward them.
People she didn't know.
People from the hotel.
People from her childhood.
Then she saw herself.
A photograph of Mara at age seven.
Another at ten.
Another at fourteen.
Then one taken only three weeks earlier.
Mara's face drained of color.
“Someone has been watching me.”
Luca's expression became colder.
“For a long time.”
“Why?”
He didn't answer.
Mara moved along the wall.
Then stopped.
A photo of Rose Ellis.
Her mother stood beside Anthony Moretti.
Both were smiling.
Mara had never seen the photograph.
She reached toward it.
Luca caught her hand.
“Wait.”
A red mark had been drawn around Rose's wrist.
Mara remembered the night before her mother died.
Rose had come home with a bruise around that exact wrist.
She had dismissed it.
A clumsy accident.
Mara touched the photo.
“My mother was afraid.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my father was afraid too.”
Mara looked at him.
“Your father?”
“He died six months after your mother.”
“What happened to him?”
“Officially? Heart attack.”
“And unofficially?”
“He was poisoned.”
Mara stepped back.
“By who?”
Luca looked toward the filing cabinets.
“That's why I kept this book.”
Suddenly a light turned red.
Then another.
An alarm began pulsing through the corridor.
Luca's phone vibrated.
He answered.
A man's voice shouted through the speaker.
“Get out! Now!”
“Who is this?”
“No questions. They know you're there.”
The call ended.
Mara heard a mechanical sound behind them.
Locks engaging.
“Luca.”
He turned.
Steel shutters began dropping over every exit.
“Move!”
They sprinted down the corridor.
One shutter slammed behind them.
Another ahead.
Luca fired at the control box.
Nothing.
Mara spotted a narrow maintenance hatch.
“Here!”
They squeezed inside just as the final shutter hit the floor.
Darkness swallowed them.
Mara could barely breathe.
Luca's shoulder pressed against hers.
They heard footsteps outside.
Slow.
Measured.
Someone was searching.
Mara whispered:
“Who are they?”
Luca answered quietly.
“The people who buried your mother.”
A voice came from the other side of the metal wall.
“I wouldn't call her buried.”
Mara froze.
The voice was familiar.
Too familiar.
Helen.
Her aunt.
Mara covered her mouth.
Luca immediately grabbed her arm.
The voice continued.
“You're very close, Mara.”
Mara began crying silently.
“Aunt Helen?”
A pause.
Then:
“Yes.”
Mara stared at Luca.
He looked almost as shocked as she was.
Helen spoke again.
“Listen to me. Your mother didn't die.”
Mara stopped breathing.
“She was alive the night you attended her funeral.”
Luca's eyes narrowed.
“Where is she?” he asked loudly.
Helen laughed once.
“She knew you'd come looking eventually, Luca.”
“You've been lying to her for years.”
“I was protecting her.”
“From whom?”
Helen's voice lowered.
“From your father.”
Silence.
Luca's face changed.
“My father is dead.”
“So is the man you think he was.”
Mara whispered:
“What does that mean?”
Helen answered.
“Your mother trusted Anthony Moretti once.”
She paused.
“Then she discovered what he had built beneath Bellweather.”
Luca looked around the corridor.
“What did he build?”
Helen whispered one final sentence.
“A place where people disappeared without ever being reported missing.”
The lights shut off.
Something heavy struck the other side of the hatch.
Mara screamed.
Luca grabbed her hand.
“Run.”
They crawled through darkness as the metal began bending inward.
Behind them, Helen shouted:
“Mara, don't let Luca take you to Room 2047!”
Luca froze.
“Why?”
Helen screamed:
“Because that's where your mother is!”
A deafening crash split the corridor.
The hatch door tore open.
A gloved hand reached inside.
Mara and Luca ran.
But neither of them noticed the tiny camera above the ceiling.
May you like
Its red light blinked once.
Then transmitted their location.
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