The Voice That Answered

The imitation did not die when Mara disrupted it. It came apart in the air, its features loosening into strips of shadow that crawled across the copper tubes. Every microphone in the seventh chamber clicked on at once.

Then Mara heard herself say, “I’m here.”

The words came from beneath the floor, behind the walls, and from the ruined mouth of the figure outside the cage. The last voice was hers exactly—calm, clipped, trained by years of answering strangers at the worst moment of their lives.

Daniel gripped the bars. “Don’t answer it.”

“I already did,” Mara said.

“No. Not that way.”

The chamber shuddered. Dust sifted from the ceiling. On the power plate beneath the floor, the seven notches began to glow one after another. The seventh burned red, as though the metal still remembered the blood that had opened it.

Shaw moved toward the plate, her shoes ringing against the grated floor. “The system has recognized her.”

“Recognized me as what?” Mara asked.

Shaw’s silence was answer enough.

Jonah lay beside one of the observation chairs, pressing both hands against his wounded side. His face had gone gray, but his eyes remained sharp. “You knew,” he said. “All this time, you knew she was part of it.”

“I knew there was a final subject,” Shaw replied. “I did not know it was Mara until the door opened.”

“Convenient distinction.”

“It is an accurate one.”

A tone sounded in the chamber. Seven notes, descending. On the wall above the cable cage, a row of dead bulbs flickered alive. Each displayed a time remaining.

07:03.

Mara looked at Shaw. “Remaining until what?”

“Caleb’s prediction,” Shaw said. “Or the event that prediction describes.”

As if summoned by his name, Caleb Voss appeared in the passage beyond the open door. His coat was torn, and blood darkened one side of his neck. He held a compact metal case in one hand and a pistol in the other.

“Step away from the plate,” he ordered Shaw.

Shaw smiled without warmth. “You’re late.”

“I was delayed by the people you left in the tunnels.”

“I left no one.”

“You left copies.”

The copper tubes gave a soft collective sigh. From somewhere far above them came the sound of feet crossing the lighthouse floor. One set. Then another. Then dozens.