Chapter 9 - The Code on Her Skin
“Marcus, the override code!” Julian yelled, firing three consecutive shots into the thick hydraulic hinge of the descending shutter. The bullets sparked harmlessly off the reinforced titanium, leaving only small divots.
“I don’t have the medical clearance!” Marcus yelled back, trading fire with one of the guards who had burst through a side maintenance hatch. Gunfire reverberated deafeningly inside the narrow concrete corridor. “It needs a genetic key and the patient authorization cipher!”
Julian looked down at Maya. The little girl was trembling violently, her hands clamped over her ears to block out the roar of gunfire, tears carving clean lines through the soot on her cheeks.
“Maya,” Julian dropped to his knees, taking her by the shoulders. “Look at me, sweetheart. The numbers on your shoulder. When the lady in the glass house gave you the purse, did she give you another word? A secret word?”
Maya looked into her father’s eyes, her small chest heaving with sobs. “She… she told me to remember Mommy’s song. The song Mommy sang when I was scared of the thunder.”
Julian’s mind raced through memories of their life together before the darkness fell. Summer nights in the lake house. Rain pounding against the skylights. Elena sitting on the edge of Maya’s bed, softly humming an old French lullaby.
“Sur le pont d'Avignon,” Julian whispered, the words tumbling from his lips.
He sprang to his feet, lunged toward the external emergency terminal beside the pod door, and slammed his fingers onto the keypad. He entered the alphanumeric sequence from Maya’s skin: 7X9-KTL-004-BER, followed by the translated phonetic title of the lullaby: AVIGNON.
The terminal beeped once. A green cursor flashed on the digital screen. Genetic verification required.
Julian grabbed Maya, lifting her small hand to the optical scanner. “Press your palm here, Maya. Press it hard!”
A blue laser scanned the child’s tiny fingers. The console chimed softly.
May you like
Access Granted: Primary Kin Bypass.
The descending steel shutter abruptly halted with a hydraulic shriek. Inside the control pod, Victoria’s eyes widened with pure terror as the heavy pneumatic locks on the pod door hissed open, venting a cloud of frozen nitrogen across the floor.
