Chapter 8 - THE DEAL MICHAEL MADE
Claire answers Michael’s call but says nothing.
His voice comes through the speaker.
“We reached the lodge entrance.”
“Did you promise Ethan to Jonathan?”
Silence.
Claire looks at Anna.
The woman lowers herself onto a chair, exhausted from the climb through the service shaft.
“Answer me,” Claire says.
Michael’s breathing changes.
“I promised a blood sample.”
“The video says he could take the sample.”
“I never agreed to let him take Ethan.”
“You brought me to a facility controlled by the man who trafficked newborns.”
“I thought federal investigators had already taken control.”
“Olivia never told you that.”
Michael looks toward his sister.
Olivia hears Claire through the shared radio.
“What video?” she asks.
Claire explains the transmitter chip.
Olivia turns on Michael.
“You met Father before the birth?”
“He contacted me three months ago.”
“And you said nothing.”
“He claimed Ethan might inherit the same immune disorder as Rebecca.”
“Rebecca does not have an immune disorder.”
“I did not know that.”
Claire’s anger becomes quiet.
“You wanted the truth about Rebecca’s identity buried.”
Michael does not deny it.
Jonathan offered to destroy Helena’s custody claim and replace the Blackridge records proving Rebecca’s complicated birth history.
In exchange, Michael would bring Claire to Summit Haven and allow Ethan’s blood to be collected after delivery.
“You traded one child’s privacy for another child’s body,” Claire says.
“I thought it was a harmless sample.”
“You always think the secret is harmless when you are the one choosing it.”
Michael closes his eyes.
Olivia takes the radio from him.
“Claire, Anna is alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is she safe?”
“For now.”
Anna looks toward Ethan.
“Jonathan will not hurt the newborn.”
Claire turns sharply.
“You trust him?”
“No. I understand his obsession.”
Anna explains that Jonathan spent decades trying to create a hereditary resistance to a fatal neurological disease that killed his wife.
Olivia’s mother.
Anna inherited the disease.
Olivia did not.
Jonathan used Anna’s cells to develop the Blackridge prenatal treatment.
“He wanted to prevent other families from suffering,” Anna says.
“He imprisoned you,” Claire replies.
“He also kept me alive.”
“Both things can be true.”
Anna begins crying.
Jonathan told her that her daughter would receive the final treatment and live without the disease.
After the birth, he took the child.
“I need her back.”
Claire looks at Ethan, then at the rescued mothers and newborns gathering in the central ward.
Every adult in this story believes one child can be sacrificed to save another.
Claire refuses to make that choice.
“Olivia,” she says into the radio, “bring Jonathan back alive.”
Michael looks toward the lodge.
“He has armed security.”
Marcus examines the railway tunnel.
“There is another route through the ventilation shaft.”
Helena stays near Olivia.
“My daughter’s implant records are inside.”
They divide.
Marcus and Michael enter through the main maintenance door as a distraction.
Olivia and Helena use the ventilation shaft.
At the resort, Claire asks Nora to copy every file from the transmitter chip.
Rebecca sits beside Anna.
“You’re Aunt Olivia’s sister?”
Anna smiles weakly.
“Yes.”
“Did you know my dad?”
Anna looks toward Claire.
“He visited my room once.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was sorry.”
Rebecca lowers her eyes.
Claire asks Anna what Jonathan intends to do with the baby.
“He needs Ethan’s blood and my daughter’s stem cells to complete the treatment.”
“What happens to the children?”
“If it works, nothing.”
“And if it fails?”
Anna cannot answer.
Claire looks toward Nora.
“Can the procedure happen at the lodge?”
Nora checks the facility blueprint.
“Yes. There is a neonatal laboratory.”
Claire grabs the wheelchair remote.
“We are going.”
“You cannot travel through the tunnel after surgery,” Nora says.
“My son is part of the plan, and Michael has already proven he cannot make decisions for us.”
Rebecca stands.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“You stay with the rescued families and the federal agents when they arrive.”
Rebecca’s face hardens.
“You said that last time.”
Claire hears herself.
Adults hide children from danger, then call secrecy protection.
But Rebecca is still a child.
“You are not responsible for fixing this,” Claire says. “That is my job.”
Rebecca looks toward Ethan.
“Then bring him back.”
Claire promises.
Nora pushes Claire’s wheelchair onto a small maintenance cart. Anna lies on a secured stretcher beside her.
They travel through the tunnel toward the lodge.
Halfway there, the power fails.
The cart stops.
A voice comes through the tunnel speakers.
Jonathan.
“Claire Bennett, you continue to surprise me.”
Claire looks upward.
“You have Anna’s baby.”
“And you have Anna.”
“Release the child.”
“Bring Ethan.”
“No.”
“Then remain in the tunnel until the temperature falls below freezing.”
Metal doors close at both ends of the passage.
Nora checks the emergency controls.
Jonathan has locked them inside.
Anna grips Claire’s hand.
“There is a manual rail beneath the cart.”
Together, they release it.
The cart begins moving slowly down the inclined tunnel.
At the lodge, Michael enters the main laboratory.
Jonathan stands beside a neonatal incubator.
Inside lies Anna’s newborn daughter.
She is safe and monitored.
But another bassinet stands beside her.
It carries Ethan’s name.
Michael stares at it.
Jonathan smiles.
“You see? I always prepared for both children.”
The ventilation grille opens above.
Olivia and Helena enter.
Marcus appears through the service door.
Jonathan is surrounded.
Then Crane’s voice speaks from a monitor.
“Not quite.”
Crane was never transported from Summit Haven.
He escaped during the evacuation.
On-screen, he stands inside the resort’s central nursery with Rebecca beside him.
A syringe rests near her shoulder.
Claire sees the broadcast from the tunnel.
May you like
Crane smiles into the camera.
“Bring Ethan to the lodge, or the daughter everyone fought over for eight years will not leave this mountain alive.”
