Chapter 37 - Bloodline and Bedrock
"Move! To the auxiliary shaft!" Marcus shouted over the roar of escaping steam, shoving Dennis toward the iron ladder passage before turning to lay down a precise, suppressive spray of fire that kept the Directorate's guards pinned behind the basalt columns.
I didn't run immediately. I reached down into the broken console, grabbed the shredded remains of the punched brass card bearing my name, and ripped it free from the bent gears. As it came away, a small, hollow cylindrical capsule concealed within the core of the reader popped out into my palm.
It was made of cold silver, marked with Julian’s private personal seal: an owl with an open compass in its talons.
I thrust the capsule into my coat pocket, grabbed Dennis by his collar to steady him as he stumbled through the rising pool of scalding fluid, and shoved him up the ladder. "Climb, Dennis! Don't look down!"
We scrambled up the vertical shaft as bullets ricocheted off the lower iron rungs, the sounds dull and thumping through the dense steam. By the time Marcus cleared the hatch behind us and slammed the forty-pound cast-iron dog down into its receiver, my lungs were burning with sulfur and oil fumes.
We were back in Sub-Level 7, but there was no time to breathe.
"Dennis," I said, wiping soot and oil from my face with my sleeve. "Where did Pendelton say Eleanor was?"
"The... the private executive suite," Dennis wheezed, clutching his chest, his spectacles hanging from one ear. "The fourth floor of the old hotel wing. Julian’s private office."
"Marcus, take the service elevator," I ordered, my pulse hammering in my temples. "Cut the power to the public lifts. If Pendelton has men stationed on the perimeter, they’ll try to move Eleanor out the rear freight bay before we can reach the upper levels."
"Nina," Marcus grabbed my arm, his eyes dead serious. "Your mother isn't an innocent bystander in this. You heard Pendelton. Julian signed an auxiliary codicil when they married. She’s been collecting dividends from the Meridian accounts for twenty years while you were living on scrap bread in the attic."
"I know," I said, my voice dead and cold. "That’s why I’m going to be the one to hand her the pen."
We took the reinforced iron emergency stairs, climbing four stories in double time, our boots echoing against the concrete walls until we reached the carpeted quiet of the executive wing.
The contrast was surreal.
Down below, an industrial engine capable of leveling three city blocks was groaning against its arrestor dogs; up here, the morning sun was streaming through tall, arched mahogany windows, illuminating plush burgundy carpets, oil paintings of nineteenth-century clipper ships, and the scent of freshly brewed Earl Grey tea.
Two men in dark suits stood outside Julian’s office doors.
They saw Marcus’s weapon an instant too late. Marcus didn't bother with verbal warnings; he closed the distance with terrifying military efficiency, using the heavy receiver of his captured submachine gun to take the first man down with a crushing strike to the jaw, while simultaneously driving the second man into the wainscoting with a knee to the solar plexus. The second man collapsed, gasping for air, his gun clattering across the runner rug.
Marcus didn't check their pulses. He kicked their weapons down the stairwell, kicked the double mahogany doors open, and stepped aside.
Inside, seated on a velvet chaise lounge with a fine bone china teacup poised delicately between her manicured fingers, was my mother, Eleanor.
Beside her, Kayla was curled up in a high-backed leather chair, her mascara smeared from the previous night's humiliation, clutching a designer handbag as if it were a life raft.
Eleanor did not drop her cup when the doors crashed inward. She merely paused, her eyes narrowing as she looked at my grease-covered face, my torn wool coat, and the blood smudged across my cheekbone.
"Really, Nina," Eleanor said, her voice dripping with the exact same patronizing disgust she had used when she sent me upstairs to fetch her silk slippers. "Must you always make a theatrical entrance? These gentlemen from Geneva were just explaining that your little legal stunt this morning was entirely invalid. Julian’s estate has foreign covenants that supersede your ridiculous probate games."
"The gentlemen from Geneva are currently drowning in scalding hydraulic fluid eighty feet beneath your feet, Eleanor," I said, walking into the room, my heavy work boots leaving black, oily prints on the hand-woven rug.
Kayla flinched, shrinking back into the leather chair. "Mom... she’s crazy. Look at her. Tell her to get out! She ruined my engagement, she stole the title, she—"
"Be quiet, Kayla," I commanded without looking at her. My eyes remained fixed on Eleanor.
I pulled the silver capsule from my pocket and dropped it into the center of Eleanor’s tea tray. It struck the silver teapot with a sharp, hollow *clink*.
Eleanor’s gaze dropped to the capsule. The color instantly vanished from her cheeks, leaving her porcelain skin looking like dried parchment.
"Where... where did you find that?" she whispered, her teacup trembling so violently that amber drops splashed over her pearl-gray skirt.
"In the difference engine," I answered, stepping closer until I was towering over her. "In the punch-card slot that had my name stamped on it twenty years ago. The slot you tried to erase when you had Julian committed to the sanitarium three weeks before he died."
"I did what was necessary for this family!" Eleanor hissed, her voice suddenly shrill, the aristocratic composure shattering into ugly, raw hatred. "You were Bartholomew’s blood! Not mine! Julian looked at you and saw his grandfather’s madness—the clocks, the weights, the ledgers! He was going to give everything to the Directorate, Nina! Everything! He was going to leave Kayla and me with nothing while he buried the fortune under forty feet of basalt!"
"He didn't bury the fortune to hide it from you, Eleanor," I said, reaching down and picking up the legal document lying on the coffee table—the involuntary conservatorship petition Pendelton had prepared for her signature. "He buried it to protect the city from the Directorate. And you sold the master keys to Pendelton the day after Julian’s funeral."
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"They offered me forty million dollars," she snarled, looking up at me with venomous defiance. "Forty million! Real money, Nina! Not old iron and steam tunnels! All I had to do was sign the probate release once Vance forced you out. But you wouldn't leave. You stayed in that basement. You kept scrubbing. You wouldn't die, and you wouldn't leave!"
"And now you're going to sign something else," I said.
