Chapter 21 – The Ones Taken
The night was colder than most—too quiet, as if the air itself refused to breathe.
Thomas waited. Eyes closed, but perception wide open. His body remained still in bed, but through Echo, he was far from it. Space stretched before him in all directions—up to five hundred meters if he concentrated, though he kept to a more manageable two hundred. Every breath, every creak of wood, every distant wind brushing past a loose window shutter—he felt it.
He had waited for this.
Movement. A single adult. The same man from before. No new figures—just the one.
Thomas followed his path with cold focus.
The man entered the west wing—where the older children slept.
Then another figure moved.
Smaller. Slower.
Fiona.
Her posture was heavy. Echo painted her as sluggish, confused—drugged perhaps, or too afraid to struggle. She followed the man without sound.
Thomas's chest tightened.
So it was her. Not him.
He waited, believing—hoping—the man might return for another. For him.
But no. The man left. One child.
That was all.
Thomas blinked forward, shadowing their departure. He followed the rhythm of the vehicle's engine across the sleeping city, jumping every few hundred meters in short, sharp bursts. His body screamed in protest, but his mind held firm.
He followed them to the outskirts of London, into a neglected industrial area now overrun with quiet and dust. A hollow warehouse stood sentinel, lifeless to the eye—but not to Echo.
Beneath the concrete—
A bunker.
Fifteen children. Small beds. Thin walls.
Eight guards. Some armed. All alert.
The operation was large. Quiet. Professional. Fiona was locked inside one of the holding rooms now. The rest—unknown children. Unfamiliar energy. Some barely moved.
Thomas memorized everything.
Every hallway. Every pattern.
He blinked back.
The night wasn't over.
—
When Thomas returned to the orphanage, the wind had picked up slightly. The trees rustled with nervous breath.
He landed softly in the corridor near his room, feet silent on worn wooden floors. He walked back toward his bed, mind churning.
But a question gnawed at him.
What about the documents?
He turned toward the staff wing, reaching with Echo toward Sister Mary's office.
Empty.
No candlelight.
No presence.
Even the files were gone.
Thomas blinked in alarm to the hallway across from the office and crouched behind the wall's corner. Echo spread thin again.
Still no sign of her.
Where was she?
He pushed further—deeper into the orphanage. Through walls and corridors and thick silence.
And then—
He found her.
Sister Mary.
Unconscious.
Slumped in a chair in the orphanage administrator's office.
Her breath was shallow but stable. The files—his files—rested on the table beside her, unburned, untouched.
But outside that room—
Two figures.
Adults.
Talking in hushed voices.
He recognized neither of them.
He pressed himself to the wall, letting Echo map the space in careful layers.
They hadn't seen him. Not yet.
But they were guarding her.
And now—he knew for sure:
This night wasn't just about Fiona.
It was something more. But he will not let it.