Chapter 95 - Terminal Two
I ran down the hallway, my boots crunching against the suspended fragments of glass that dropped to the floor the moment my body passed through them. Harris and two of his operatives were close behind, their boots heavy on the tiles, but they moved with cautious, sweeping barrel discipline. I had no such discipline. I had only the raw terror of a mother who knew her daughter was inside that light.
"Lily!" I screamed, lunging through the rotating bronze threshold into Room 104.
The classroom was unrecognizable. The miniature desks and little plastic blue chairs had been swept against the exterior walls as if cleared by a localized hurricane. The center of the room—where the brightly colored circle-time rug used to sit—was completely missing.
The floor had retracted into the earth, opening into a massive, octagonal shaft that plunged hundreds of feet straight down into the subterranean dark. Floating directly above this abyss, held entirely by the converging magnetic currents that formed the emerald beam, was an eight-year-old girl in a pink knit sweater and denim overalls.
"Mommy?"
Lily's voice was small, perfectly clear, and completely unaffected by the deafening acoustic vibration humming through the walls. She was sitting cross-legged in midair, her tiny hands resting quietly on her knees. Hovering inches before her face was a small, intricately carved sphere of polished rose gold—the central mechanism missing from the music box we had found in the abandoned sawmill weeks ago.
"Lily, don't move!" I cried, stepping toward the edge of the chasm, but the air pressure pushed against my chest like a wall of solid rubber.
"Don't touch the threshold, Mrs. Blackwood!" Harris warned, lunging forward to grab my arm and pulling me back. "The field density will shear your hands off at the wrist. Look at the perimeter stabilizers."
Around the rim of the octagonal pit, six heavy hydraulic pistons stamped with the original 1924 Vance & Blackwood Foundry crest were glowing dull cherry red. They were straining against the upward geological pressure from the vault below.
"I tried to catch it, Mommy," Lily said, looking down at me with wide, completely calm hazel eyes. There was no terror in her face—only a strange, ancient familiarity that chilled my blood to the core. "The lady in the nice coat came to my window before the bell rang. She threw Aunt Victoria's gold key into the heating vent. She said if I caught it, I could have my birthday cake back."
My breath hitched. "Victoria was here... before the hearing?"
"Not Victoria," a cold, cultured voice spoke from the shadows near the back of the classroom, behind the emergency exit door. "Victoria was merely our administrative proxy. A loud, vain woman easily motivated by bank balances and leather goods."
A man stepped out of the gloom. He wore a tailored charcoal wool coat over an immaculate three-piece suit, his hair iron-gray and neatly parted. He held an ivory-handled cane in his left hand, and his right hand rested comfortably inside his pocket.
"The board of directors of the Meridian Trust," Harris growled, raising his rifle. "Arthur Sterling. You're five hundred miles outside your legal jurisdiction, Sterling."
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"Jurisdiction?" Sterling chuckled softly, tapping his cane against the metal floor. "Captain Harris, when my ancestors laid the foundational conduits of this valley alongside the Blackwood family, there wasn't a county line within three states. We don't recognize your court, your warrants, or that ridiculous probate squabble."
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