Chapter 12 - the school beneath cross manor
The first arrivals were not soldiers.
They were children.
A boy of perhaps thirteen stepped from the library elevator wearing a dark medical uniform. A girl with Rose’s pale eyebrow scar emerged near the dining room. Two young men wearing identical Cross Aegis compliance badges appeared beside the staircase.
Others were older.
Some appeared to be in their twenties.
One woman looked nearly forty.
Each carried a pistol or transfer document.
Several escorted bound adults.
A former Cross Aegis physician.
A retired board director.
A private banker Eleanor had met at charity dinners.
A federal contractor who once testified that no patients had been trafficked through company facilities.
Beatrice had paired every heir with a person connected to the stolen medical network.
She had given each child a villain.
Then taught them that punishment was ownership.
The thirteen-year-old boy aimed his pistol at David’s former attorney.
“Confess that you erased my birth.”
The attorney shook so badly he could not speak.
Eleanor raised her voice.
“No one fires.”
Some heirs looked toward her.
Others looked toward hidden cameras.
Beatrice controlled them through observation even when she was not physically present.
Mara still stood near Lily.
Her pistol remained lowered.
Vanessa crawled toward the drinks cabinet.
Eleanor noticed.
“So help me, Vanessa, if you reach for a weapon—”
“I’m reaching for the alarm controls.”
“The system belongs to Beatrice.”
“The digital system does.”
Vanessa pulled open the lowest cabinet drawer and removed a brass handle hidden beneath the wood.
“Mother never trusted electricity completely.”
She turned it.
Copper bells began ringing inside the walls.
The scanner near the fireplace went dark.
The heirs looked upward as Beatrice’s voice vanished from the speakers.
Mara flinched.
“What did you do?”
“Interrupted the command channel,” Vanessa said. “We have perhaps four minutes before she restores it.”
Lily approached the thirteen-year-old boy.
“What is your name?”
“David Cross.”
Eleanor’s chest tightened.
Another replacement.
“For how long?”
The boy looked confused.
“My whole life.”
“I mean, before they called you David.”
He looked toward the dead speakers.
“Unit Nine.”
The attorney beside him began crying.
“I signed the research authorization.”
The boy pointed the gun at him again.
“You sold my embryo.”
“No,” the attorney said. “I created paperwork that allowed Aster to transfer stored genetic samples. I never knew children would be born.”
“You knew enough to accept money.”
“Yes.”
The confession did not calm the boy.
Beatrice had taught him that truth existed only to justify punishment.
Eleanor knelt despite the pain still lingering beneath her ribs from Vanessa’s knife.
“You have every right to hate what he did.”
The boy looked at her.
“You are Eleanor Cross.”
“Yes.”
“You kept the company.”
“I did.”
“You benefited from the work.”
“Without knowing all of it.”
“That is what every Cross says.”
He was right.
Ignorance had become the family’s favorite defense.
Eleanor did not use it.
“I benefited from systems I failed to examine closely enough.”
The boy’s pistol remained raised.
“What happens to him?”
“A court hears the evidence.”
“The courts worked with Aster.”
“Then we expose those courts too.”
“That takes years.”
“Yes.”
His expression hardened.
“Beatrice said justice delayed is permission.”
“And she kept you underground until she needed you.”
The words struck harder than Eleanor intended.
The boy looked toward the elevator.
Behind him, the girl resembling Rose began backing away from her assigned witness.
Mara spoke.
“We were not kept underground.”
“Where did you live?” Lily asked.
“Schools. Hospitals. family residences.”
“Could you leave?”
“We were protected.”
Eleanor recognized the word again.
Protected.
The word used when someone denied another person the right to choose.
Vanessa’s brass alarm stopped ringing.
The wall screens flickered.
Beatrice returned.
“Contingency heirs, the visible family is attempting emotional corruption.”
A red light appeared on every pistol.
Mara examined hers.
“The weapons are remotely controlled.”
Lily looked at her.
“Can she fire them?”
Mara’s silence answered.
Beatrice could turn every heir into a murderer without requiring them to pull a trigger.
“Put them down,” Eleanor ordered.
Several heirs obeyed.
Others hesitated.
The red lights flashed faster.
Vanessa crossed the room, grabbed the nearest antique table, and overturned it. Lily pulled Mara behind the sofa. Eleanor reached the boy called David.
The first pistol fired by itself.
The bullet struck the ceiling.
Then a second weapon discharged.
Then a third.
Chaos spread through Cross Manor.
Heirs dropped guns, but some weapons fired as they hit the floor. Bound witnesses screamed. Glass shattered above the staircase.
Eleanor pulled the thirteen-year-old behind the clock.
Vanessa found a copper cable beneath the rug and cut it with the same knife she had once used against her sister.
Half the pistol lights died.
The other half remained active.
“Separate network,” Vanessa shouted.
“Where?” Lily asked.
“Below us.”
Mara pointed toward the elevator.
“The instruction school.”
They needed to reach the underground control center.
Eleanor looked around the room.
Twenty-six heirs.
Twenty-six assigned enemies.
One family system attempting to make every one of them repeat the violence it claimed to judge.
She turned toward Vanessa.
“You know the lower levels.”
Vanessa pressed a hand against her bleeding wrist.
“Some.”
“Then lead us.”
Vanessa looked toward Lily.
“You trust me now?”
“No,” Lily said. “But I believe you want Beatrice stopped more than you want us dead.”
Vanessa gave a tired smile.
“That may be the kindest thing you have ever said to me.”
Mara retrieved her pistol after its indicator went dark.
Lily caught her wrist.
“Leave it.”
“It may be useful.”
“It was built to control you.”
Mara looked at the weapon.
Then placed it beneath Eleanor’s torn coat.
The weight settled against her hip.
May you like
Once again, a daughter had hidden a pistol beneath her coat.
Only this time, Eleanor did not know whether the girl beside her intended rescue, betrayal, or both.
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