Page 22 of King's Reckoning
"This way," Abby said. She pointed to a maintenance door. "Service tunnels run under the whole hospital. I mapped them years ago, back when..."
"Back when what?" Rowan demanded.
Abby's smile was grim. "Back when your mother and I were planning for exactly this kind of situation."
The door opened onto a maze of utility tunnels. Pipes and conduits lined the walls, and the air smelled of damp concrete. Abby led them through turns and junctions with suspicious familiarity.
"Mom really did plan for everything," Rowan muttered.
"She had to," Abby replied. "Once she understood what The Archive really was, what it could do...she knew they'd never stop hunting it. Never stop hunting you."
"What is it?" Reed asked. "What makes it so valuable?"
Before Abby could answer, Rowan's phone buzzed. A text from King.Clear. Heading for rendezvous point B.
"Your father always did know how to make an exit," Abby said. "Usually with things exploding behind him."
They emerged into a parking garage two blocks from the hospital. King and Ace were waiting with vehicles—nondescript sedans instead of bikes. Less conspicuous for moving their injured guest.
"We need to talk," King told Abby as they helped her into one of the cars. "About Elena. About everything."
"Yes," she agreed, "we do. Because they're getting closer. The ones who've been searching all these years, they're finally putting the pieces together. And when they do..."
"When they do what?"
Abby's eyes found Rowan's. "When they do, you'll understand why your mother was willing to die to keep The Archive safe. Why we all were."
Rowan felt Reed's hand on her back, steady and warm. "Then we'd better make sure that doesn't happen."
They drove through the pre-dawn streets, leaving the chaos at the hospital behind. But Rowan knew they were just trading one battlefield for another. The weight of secrets—her mother's, her father's, Abby's—pressed down on her.
Whatever The Archive was, whatever power it held, one thing was becoming clear: the price of protecting it was measured in blood. And they weren't done paying yet.
Dawn broke over the clubhouse as Rowan watched Abby trace symbols on the mysterious box with trembling fingers. Even battered and exhausted, the woman moved with the kind of familiarity that suggested she'd spent years studying these patterns. Which, according to her, she had.
"Elena enhanced the original protections," Abby explained, her voice hoarse from the night's events. "Added layers of safeguards that only certain people could breach. Blood-locked, she called it. That's why it responded to you, Rowan. Why it recognizes King's touch."
"And yours?" Reed asked from his position by the door. He hadn't relaxed since they'd arrived, treating Abby like a potential threat.
"I helped design some of those safeguards." Abby's fingers found a particular sequence of marks. "Back when your mother and I were still trying to understand what we'd found. Before we realized how dangerous that knowledge could be."
The box hummed beneath her touch, that same high-pitched resonance that had affected Rowan earlier. But this time it felt different—less hostile.
"You said Mom came to you the night she left," Rowan said, watching Abby's face carefully. "Why? What happened?"
Abby's hands stilled on the box. For a moment she looked much older, weighted down by memories. "She found something in The Archive. Something that changed everything. A truth about this land, about power itself. Something worth dying to protect." Her eyes met Rowan's. "Something worth leaving everything behind to keep safe."
"Including her daughter?" The words came out sharper than Rowan intended.
"Especially her daughter." Abby's voice softened. "Elena knew they'd use anyone close to her to get to The Archive. That's why she split it up, hid the pieces with trusted brothers. Why she encoded everything so carefully. And why she made sure you'd be ready when the time came."
"Ready for what?" King demanded. He'd been silent until now, watching Abby with an unreadable expression. "What was Elena protecting us from?"
Before Abby could answer, Barbara burst into the room, her usual professional calm shattered. "We have a problem. A big one."
She spread satellite photos across the table, recent images of the territory surrounding the club. Red circles marked locations Rowan recognized from her mother's journal.
"These energy readings," Barbara said, indicating spikes on accompanying charts, hervoice thickening with urgency. "They match what we detected from both boxes. But they're getting stronger. Like something's waking up."
