Chapter 37 - Seventy-Two Hours
Lena refused to chase Iris.
Instead, she made the argument public.
Not the identities.
The choice.
Milo published an article explaining that thousands of people might have records in a compromised historical adoption network. Anyone who believed they were affected could register confidentially with an independent court-appointed panel.
Within six hours, the website crashed.
Within twelve, ten thousand people had registered.
Some wanted everything.
Some wanted nothing.
Some wanted medical history but no names.
Some wanted biological relatives contacted only if those relatives consented.
Lena printed the response categories and placed them before Evelyn.
“This is what you never understood.”
Evelyn read them.
“Complexity?”
“Consent.”
Evelyn smiled sadly.
“I understood it. I simply thought control was more efficient.”
“And was it?”
“No.”
That answer mattered more than Lena expected.
Miriam requested to speak with her.
When Lena arrived, Miriam pushed a folded note beneath the glass.
“Iris will not erase the archive.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I wouldn’t.”
“You’re not her.”
“No. But we share the same wound.”
Lena opened the note.
It contained an address.
“What is this?”
“Where Evelyn took us after Saint Agnes.”
An old farmhouse outside Scranton.
Iris was there.
They found her sitting on the porch with the master drive in her lap.
No guards.
No weapons visible.
Julian remained by the car.
Lena approached alone.
“You brought the survey.”
“You knew?”
“I read Milo.”
“Then you saw the responses.”
“Yes.”
“People want different things.”
“People always want different things.”
“So let them.”
Iris looked across the dead field.
“My adoptive father loved me.”
“Reuben says he did.”
“He also lied every day.”
“Yes.”
“If he had told me, I might have spent my whole childhood wondering why my first mother didn’t keep me.”
“Maybe.”
“I had a happy childhood.”
“I’m glad.”
“Truth could have ruined it.”
“Or changed it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Ruined means someone else gets to decide the change was bad.”
Iris looked at her.
“You really are a lawyer.”
“I’ve been accused.”
For the first time, Iris smiled.
Then a vehicle appeared at the end of the road.
Julian stepped from the car.
“Lena.”
Three black SUVs approached.
Iris stood.
“I didn’t call them.”
“Who did?”
Evelyn’s voice came from behind Lena.
“I did.”
Lena turned.
Evelyn stood beside the farmhouse door.
“You followed us?”
“No. I knew Iris would come here.”
The SUVs stopped.
Men in federal tactical gear emerged.
But Julian did not lower his guard.
“Wrong patches,” he said.
The shooting began.
Lena and Iris dove behind the porch wall.
Evelyn fell.
Julian returned fire only long enough to force the attackers back, then ran toward them.
“Inside!”
They barricaded the farmhouse.
Iris gripped the master drive.
“Who are they?”
Evelyn, bleeding from her side, whispered, “Beneficiaries.”
People whose careers, fortunes, or safety depended on Aurora’s secrets.
“They don’t want the archive erased,” Lena realized.
“They want it.”
A voice outside shouted.
“Give us the drive and you walk away.”
Iris laughed.
“That offer has never aged well.”
Reuben arrived with real federal agents fifteen minutes later, after Julian had triggered an emergency beacon.
The attackers fled.
One was captured.
His identity stunned everyone.
He was the chief of staff to Senator Abigail Wren.
Abigail denied knowledge.
Maybe truthfully.
Maybe not.
The seventy-two-hour deadline became irrelevant.
Iris looked at the blood on Evelyn’s dress.
Then at the drive.
“You were right.”
Lena shook her head.
“About what?”
“This cannot belong to one person.”
“No.”
“Not you.”
“No.”
“Not me.”
“No.”
Iris handed her the drive.
Lena refused to take it.
“Then who?”
Lena looked at the farmhouse full of people whose lives had been rearranged by secret keepers.
“Everyone it belongs to.”
They would create a court-supervised process.
No public dump.
No private owner.
No single guardian.
For once, the archive would not be a weapon.
Then Evelyn whispered from the floor.
“There is one record you should read before you surrender it.”
“Whose?”
Evelyn looked at Lena.
May you like
“Gabriel’s.”
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