We slid through the hole into a darkness that smelled of earth and mold. Lily turned on her phone’s flashlight, illuminating a small concrete basement. There were sleeping bags, boxes of canned food, and, on a folding table, several unlit monitors and disassembled electronic equipment.
“What is this?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“Our base of operations,” Lily said, letting go of my hand to go and block the entrance from the inside with an iron bar. “This is where we plan the jobs. And where we hide when things get rough.”
She turned toward me. The light from her phone cast long shadows across her face, making her look much older than thirteen. She took off her ski mask and threw it to the ground. Underneath, her face was dirty, with a scratch on her cheek, but her eyes… those were my daughter’s eyes. Eyes that now looked at me with a mixture of shame and defiance.
“Why, Lily?” I asked, my voice trembling with adrenaline and pain. “Why were you doing this? Robbing houses? Stoling guns?”
She slumped down in an old camping chair.
“We didn’t start by stealing, Mom. We started by searching.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Six months ago, a man approached me in the park. He said I was special. That I had ‘potential.’ He offered me money for doing simple things: watching a house, delivering a package. I thought it was easy. I wanted to buy my own things, help out around the house without asking…”
—You should have told me.
“I couldn’t!” she cried, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. “By the time I realized what they were… they already had me. They showed me pictures of you walking into work. Pictures of you sleeping. They said if I quit the show, you’d have an ‘accident.’”
I felt an icy chill in my stomach.
“So I recruited Leo and Sarah,” he continued, lowering his voice. “They were trapped too. We decided that if we did what they asked, if we were their best ‘assets,’ they wouldn’t hurt you. But we started hoarding things. Money. Jewelry. And files. We were looking for a way out.”
—The neighbor from 42… the Observer… said that your final test was to eliminate me.
Lily nodded slowly, tears welling up in her eyes again. “I received the order this morning. ‘Cut the link.’ They gave me the gun. They told me if I didn’t do it tonight, they would come and kill us both.”
He stood up and came over to me, taking my hands in his. His fingers were ice cold.
“I was going to go after him, Mom. I was going to kill the Watcher before he could give the order to the cleanup crew. But you… you had to go play detective.”
“I’m your mother,” I said, squeezing her hands. “It’s my job to protect you, even from yourself.”
“Not anymore,” she whispered. “Now we’re on their kill list. Project Chrysalis leaves no loose ends.”
Suddenly, a dull thud echoed above our heads. Footsteps. Heavy and slow.
Lily turned off her phone’s light instantly. We were left in total darkness, listening to the dust falling from the ceiling.
“They’ve found us,” I whispered in Lily’s ear.
“They shouldn’t… unless…” Lily patted her pocket. She pulled out her phone. The screen glowed dimly. “Damn it. The tracker. I thought I’d turned it off.”
—What do we do?
Lily gripped the pistol again. The sound of the safety being released was deafening in the silence.
“There’s an exit through the drainage tunnel. It leads to the river. You have to go, Mom. I’ll keep them busy.”
“No way,” I said, and my voice sounded firmer than I felt. “I’m not going to leave you. If we go out, we go out together.”
—Mom, they’re trained killers. You don’t stand a chance.
I remembered the sensation of the stapler hitting the Observer’s temple. I remembered the fury I felt when I saw the photos on the wall.
“I may not have training, Lily,” I said, searching in the darkness until my hand closed around the iron bar they used to bar the door. “But I have something they don’t.”
-The fact that?
—I have my daughter. And nobody touches my daughter.
The wooden ceiling creaked violently, and with a crash, the entrance trapdoor was ripped off its hinges. A blinding beam of light flooded the basement, followed by a smoke grenade that rolled across the floor.
“Down!” Lily shouted.
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