CHAPTER 4
PART 4 — THE MOUNTAIN OF SLEEPING CHILDREN
Raven Mountain rose from the forest like a broken tooth.
The road ended five miles from the old military facility, blocked by fallen trees and abandoned construction equipment. Ruiz led a tactical team through the woods while Violet and I followed inside an armored vehicle.
The mountain was too quiet.
No birds.
No wind.
Only the low mechanical hum of something enormous breathing beneath the earth.
At the entrance, a steel door waited behind a curtain of vines.
There was no keypad.
No handle.
Only a glass plate.
Violet stepped forward.
The plate illuminated beneath her palm.
A female voice spoke from hidden speakers.
“PRIMARY SUBJECT RECOGNIZED.”
The steel door opened.
Every agent raised a weapon.
Violet looked at me. “Primary subject?”
I did not have an answer.
We entered a corridor lit by white strips along the floor. The air smelled antiseptic, cold, and faintly metallic. The facility appeared abandoned, yet every light responded to Violet’s movement.
Doors unlocked before she touched them.
Cameras turned to follow her.
The mountain knew its child had come home.
We reached an observation room overlooking the laboratory from the video.
Rows of glass chambers stood beneath blue lights.
There were forty-three.
Every chamber was empty.
Ruiz swore under her breath.
On the central console, a countdown continued:
35:17:42
“Termination of what?” an agent asked.
The speakers answered.
“FACILITY PURGE.”
Violet moved toward the console.
A voice whispered behind us.
“Do not touch it.”
We turned.
Elias Ward stood in the doorway, pale beneath the scars crossing his face.
He had left the hospital against medical orders. Fresh blood darkened the bandage at his side.
Ruiz aimed at him. “Hands up.”
Ward obeyed.
Mason, I told myself.
He is not her father.
But the DNA test had disagreed.
Violet stared at him with a mixture of anger and unwanted curiosity.
“You were at my house.”
“Yes.”
“You let Croft hurt me.”
“I tried to stop him.”
“You failed.”
Ward looked at me. “She sounds like you.”
“She sounds like herself.”
He nodded, accepting the warning.
Ward explained that the chambers were decoys. The real subjects had been moved deeper underground after Harper triggered Site Nine’s emergency protocol.
“Where?” Violet asked.
“Level Seven.”
“There are only six levels on the map,” Ruiz said.
Ward glanced at Violet.
“The seventh level only exists for her.”
The central console activated.
A map appeared, followed by a request:
PRIMARY SUBJECT VOICE AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.
Violet stepped closer.
Ward grabbed her arm.
“Once you open Level Seven, Vale will know.”
She pulled free.
“He already knows we’re here.”
“No. He knows you entered the mountain. He does not know whether you will accept control.”
“Control of what?”
Ward looked toward the empty chambers.
“Everyone made from you.”
The truth unfolded slowly.
Project Firefly had not merely copied Violet’s DNA.
It had created a network.
Each subject carried an engineered neural marker that allowed Meridian to trigger memories, suppress fear, and transmit simple commands through a low-frequency signal.
Violet carried the original marker.
The others were linked to her.
“She can control them?” Ruiz asked.
Ward shook his head. “Not exactly. She can wake them.”
Violet’s face hardened. “They’re alive?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
Ward hesitated.
“Two hundred and sixteen.”
The countdown dropped another second.
Violet faced the console.
“Open Level Seven.”
The speakers asked for authorization.
She leaned toward the microphone.
“My name is Violet Hale.”
Nothing happened.
Ward said quietly, “That is not the name they gave you.”
I saw something inside her break.
“What name?”
“Firefly One.”
She closed her eyes.
Then she spoke.
“Firefly One authorizes access.”
The floor trembled.
A circular platform opened in the center of the laboratory.
An elevator rose from darkness.
Inside stood a little girl in a white hospital gown.
She looked eleven years old.
Her hair was dark.
Her eyes were Violet’s.
A number had been burned into the skin beneath her collarbone.
F-17.
She stepped out barefoot.
Violet approached slowly.
The child tilted her head.
“Are you Mother?”
Violet stopped breathing.
“No.”
The girl looked disappointed.
“Then are you the voice?”
“What voice?”
“The one in our dreams.”
Behind her, the elevator descended again.
When it returned, it carried five more children.
Then ten.
Then twenty.
They emerged silently, boys and girls of different ages, all carrying fragments of Violet’s face, my jaw, Ward’s eyes.
Some were barely six.
Others looked nearly eighteen.
Every one of them had a number.
They gathered around Violet.
F-17 reached for her hand.
When their fingers touched, every child in the room gasped.
Violet collapsed.
I caught her before she hit the floor.
Her eyes opened, but they were not seeing me.
“They’re afraid,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“All of them.”
Her voice changed.
It became layered, as though dozens of children spoke through her.
“He is coming.”
The facility alarms began to scream.
Ruiz’s radio came alive.
“Hostile aircraft approaching from the east.”
Ward looked toward the ceiling.
“Vale.”
Explosions struck the mountain entrance.
Dust rained from above.
The children did not run.
They turned together toward Violet.
Waiting.
She understood before I did.
They expected her to tell them how to survive.
She stood, trembling.
“Follow the agents. Stay low. Do exactly what they say.”
The children moved as one.
Not because she controlled them.
Because they trusted her.
Vale’s soldiers entered from the upper levels wearing black tactical armor. Gunfire thundered through the corridors. Ruiz divided her team, sending half to protect the children and half to hold the stairwell.
I grabbed a rifle from a fallen attacker.
Ward stood beside me with a pistol.
For one strange moment, Violet’s two fathers faced the same enemy.
“Do not make me regret leaving you alive,” I told him.
Ward checked the weapon.
“You already regret it.”
We fought upward through smoke.
At Level Three, I found Colonel Vale waiting behind armored glass.
He held Harper by the throat.
Her shoulder was bandaged. Her face was bloodless.
Vale pressed a gun beneath her chin.
“Bring me Violet,” he said through the speaker, “or I purge every child in this mountain.”
Harper looked at me.
For the first time, I saw no deception in her expression.
Only terror.
May you like
Then she mouthed two words.
Don’t trust me.
