Chapter 73 THE BIOLOGICAL ECHO
POV SYLVIE
The Astoria Law School building was not a school that night; It was a glass fish tank surrounded by sharks. Federal helicopter lights bathed the marble columns with a frenetic pace, and the lawn, still covered in that silver haze that refused to die, was littered with tactical boots.
Nathaniel and I had been separated the moment we set foot out of the tunnels, but Sera... Sera was treated as if she were a nuclear bomb about to explode.
"Don't touch it!" I shouted for the tenth time as two agents in CBRN (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) protective suits tried to escort her to an armored ambulance.
"Miss Belrose, shut up and walk," an agent ordered, pushing me toward the Dean's office, which now served as a makeshift interrogation center.
They forced me to sit in a hardwood chair. In front of me, there was not Dean Miller, but Attorney General Diana Vance. She looked flawless, not a hair out of place even though it was three in the morning, but her eyes were bloodshot. On the table, there were a series of sensor readings that looked like crazed electrocardiograms.
"Do you have any idea what you've done, Sylvie?" Vance dropped the leaves on the table. His voice was a whip. You have released an uncatalogued biological agent into a densely populated area. I could accuse you of bioterrorism right now and make sure you never see the light of day again.
"It's not a biological agent," I replied, my voice steady even though my knees were shaking with adrenaline. It is a solution. It is what the government of this country did not have the courage to do in fifty years. I have democratized Astoria's health.
"You've made ten thousand students into test subjects," Vance roared, leaning over the table. And that woman... the one you pulled out of the tunnels. Scientists in the medical unit are panicking. They say their heart rate is synchronized with yours.
I felt a chill. Ever since Sera and I touched each other on the grass, I felt a constant buzzing at the base of my skull. It wasn't a pain, it was a presence. A vibration that went up and down.
Meanwhile, in the university's medical wing, Nathaniel was against the wall, flanked by two marshals. He had not been formally arrested, but neither was he allowed to move. Through the reinforced glass of the observation room, he could see Sera.
She was sitting on a stretcher, surrounded by sensors. He did not speak. He didn't cry. He just looked at the scientists running around with their iPads and syringes.
"Mr. Cavill," said a voice behind him.
Nathaniel turned. It was Aris Thorne. He looked old, exhausted, but his eyes shone with feverish intensity.
"Aris, get those butchers out of there," Nathaniel growled, pointing to the doctors. They don't know what they're doing. They are scaring her.
"They're not scaring her, Nathaniel," Aris whispered. They are feeding it. Sera is not a normal person. Your immune system is designed to absorb toxicity from the environment and transform it. Do you see those lights?
Nathaniel looked at the monitors. Every time a doctor approached with electronic equipment or a chemical, Sera's levels rose. I was processing the room itself.
"But there's something else," Aris continued, lowering his voice. The "Zero" sequence does not stabilize itself. You need an anchor. And that anchor is Sylvie. If they are separated now, if Sera is taken to a government facility, they will both go into a multi-organ collapse in less than forty-eight hours. It's the last life insurance Arthur installed: biological codependency.
Nathaniel clenched his fists. I knew what that meant. Sylvie had not only saved her sister; he had chained himself to it forever.
In the Dean's office, the tension was about to break.
"Tell me where the original samples are, Sylvie," Vance ordered. Give me the encryption key to your father's diaries and maybe I can convince the President not to send you to a maximum-security prison.
"There are no original samples," I lied, staring into her eyes. They were burned in the purge of the tunnels. The only thing left is in the air that you are breathing right now, Prosecutor. Don't you feel it? Astoria's air has never been so clean.
Vance was about to answer when, suddenly, all the lights in the office flickered. The monitors on the table began to beep sharply and steadily.
"What the hell...?" Vance turned to his technicians.
I felt a sudden pressure in my chest. It wasn't fear. It was... connection. I closed my eyes, and for a second, I wasn't in the office. He was in the medical room. He saw through Sera's eyes. I saw Nathaniel. I saw the fear on the doctors' faces.
Sylvie...
The voice was not in the room. It was in my head. It was a silvery, pure voice, without the weight of time.
They want to cut me off... they want to see what's inside...
"They won't let them," I whispered aloud.
"Who are you talking to?" Vance turned to me, his face full of suspicion.
"Let her go," I said, rising from my chair. The lights in the office began to glow with a white, almost blinding intensity. If they try to sedate her or draw blood aggressively, Sera's system will react. And believe me, they don't want to see what happens when a fifty-year-old biological energy source goes into defense mode.
"Are you threatening me?" Vance pulled out her phone, ready to give the order to storm.
"It's not a threat. It's a diagnosis," I replied, my voice echoing with that metallic vibration that Nathaniel knew so well.
At that moment, the door to the office burst open. Nathaniel entered, ignoring the guards who were trying to stop him. His face was distorted.
"Sylvie! Sera is reacting! The laboratory... is beginning to crystallize.
Vance pushed Nathaniel aside and ran into the hallway leading to the medical wing. I followed her, my heart in my throat.
What we saw when we arrived was worthy of a nightmare or a miracle. The air in the observation room was filled with microscopic crystals that floated like diamond snow. The doctors were petrified, not out of fear, but because the air had become so dense that they could barely move. In the center, Sera was standing, arms outstretched. Her skin was so bright that it was hard to look at her.
"It will be, stop!" I shouted, running towards the glass.
She looked at me. His face was calm, but his silver eyes were an ocean of unleashed power. The sensors in the room exploded one by one.
"They can't own me," she said, and her voice came out of the building's loudspeakers, over the radios of the patrol cars, over the phones of all the students on campus. I'm not an asset. I'm not a patent. I am the daughter of the earth that you poisoned.
Vance stepped back, covering his ears. Sera's power was interfering with everything electronic. Helicopters in the sky began to wobble, their navigation systems going haywire.
Nathaniel grabbed my arm.
"Sylvie, you have to calm her down. If it continues like this, it will fry everyone's nervous system within a radius of one kilometer.
I walked to the door of the sealed room. The marshals tried to stop me, but Nathaniel blocked them with his body, using his imposing figure to give me the seconds I needed.
"Open the damn door!" I yelled at the nurse who was at the controls.
The door slid in with a hiss. I entered the glass storm. The cold was intense, but when I touched Sera's shoulder, the world fell silent.
"Enough is enough," I said softly. The message has been delivered.
Sera blinked and the light began to fade. The diamond crystals fell to the ground as ordinary dust. She staggered and I held her, feeling her weight fall on me. She was exhausted, her system operating at the limit.
Vance entered the room, followed by a dozen armed officers.
"Take both of them," she ordered in a trembling voice, though her eyes showed that she was terrified. To the Virginia facility. Right now.
"No," Nathaniel said, entering the room and standing in front of us. He pulled a black envelope from his jacket. They are not going to take them anywhere, Prosecutor.
"And who's going to stop it, Cavill?" Your grandfather dead?
"No. The Supreme Court," Nathaniel tossed the envelope onto the medical stretcher. Ten minutes ago, Dean Miller and the university's legal team filed an emergency habeas corpus injunction . Since Sera Belrose was never legally declared dead and her detention has no judicial basis, she is a free citizen in the legal custody of her only living relative: Sylvie Belrose.
Vance opened the envelope, his hands trembling with fury as he read the sealed documents.
"This is a dead letter in a national security crisis," she spat.
"Perhaps," Nathaniel said, pointing to the living room windows. But try to explain it to them.
Vance looked out. Thousands of students, their veins gleaming faintly in the moonlight, surrounded the medical wing. They were sitting on the floor, in absolute silence, forming a human chain that stretched to the gates of the university. They weren't screaming. They were just there, a tide of witnesses that the government couldn't erase.
"If he touches them," Nathaniel said, "Astoria will burn." And this time, there will be no walls to contain the fire.
Vance looked at the crowd, then at us, and finally at Nathaniel. He knew he had lost. For now.
"This isn't over," she said, turning and leaving the room with her agents.
We were left alone in the room full of diamond dust. Nathaniel came over and surrounded us both. Sera rested her head on my shoulder, closing her eyes.
We had more chapters ahead of us. The world knew who we were. The sequence was up in the air. And although the "Academic" was exhausted, she knew that the real lesson was just beginning.
"Are you okay, 'baby'?" Nathaniel asked me, brushing a lock of hair from my face.
"I have a criminal law exam in five hours," I replied, looking at the remains of the laboratory. And I think I just broke all the laws that we were going to study.
Nathaniel smiled, that smile that made me feel that, despite everything, we were going to survive.