Chapter 6 - The Grid and the Child
The words hung in the air like poison. Mark felt the blood drain from his face, leaving his skin cold and clammy. "You’re lying. This is a sick, paranoid game. You’re squatting under my property, spying on my family—"
"Check your phone, Mark," Dr. Sterling interrupted, pointing a skeletal, trembling finger toward the handset gripped in Mark’s fist. "Call Elena. Ask her how Lily is doing right this second."
Mark didn't hesitate. He brought up Elena's contact and hit dial. It rang once. Twice. Elena answered on the third ring, her voice drowned out by hysterical crying and the high-pitched wail of an alarm inside the car.
"Mark! Oh God, Mark, come back up here!" she screamed. "Something is wrong with Lily! She started convulsing the second I put the car in reverse! Her eyes are rolling back, and she’s bleeding from her nose!"
Mark felt his knees buckle. He caught himself against the edge of a steel desk. "Elena, turn off the engine! Don't move the car! I'm coming up!"
"No, Mark! Do not come up!" Sterling’s voice cut through the room like a scalpel. He pressed another button on his console, and an audio patch cut directly into Elena’s car speakers. "Mrs. Vance, listen to me very carefully. If you drive that car beyond the perimeter fence of this property—approximately forty yards from your current position—the synaptic loop will sever. Lily’s cerebellum is slaved to the sub-frequency array in the floor beneath the foundation. Pull back into the garage. Turn off the ignition. Bring her inside."
"Who is this?!" Elena screamed through the phone. "Mark, who is talking to me?!"
"Do what he says, El!" Mark yelled, pure terror tearing through his vocal cords. "Don't leave the property! Bring her back into the living room! I'm coming up right now!"
He hung up, rounded on Sterling, and lunged across the desk, grabbing the old man by the lapels of his oversized suit. The fabric crumpled easily; the man weighed no more than eighty pounds. "Turn it off! Whatever signal you have hooked to her, shut it down!"
Sterling didn't struggle. He looked Mark directly in the eye, his milky pupils unblinking. "I can't turn it off, Mark. The array isn't a weapon; it’s an iron lung. The embryonic modifications that allowed her brain to survive gestation created a severe neurochemical deficit. The low-frequency signal stimulates her pituitary gland to produce the synthetic neurotransmitters she needs to breathe. If you unplug the array, her brain forgets how to tell her lungs to expand."
May you like
Sterling pointed to a digital countdown timer mounted above the main terminal. It read: 00:41:18. Forty-one minutes.
"The backup generators down here were flooded three days ago," Sterling whispered. "When that counter hits zero, the primary capacitors drain. The array dies. And your daughter dies with it. Unless you replace the core."
