Chapter 4: The Mother’s Voice
Ethan remembered his mother’s voice in pieces.
Not the full stories. Not the long conversations. Just fragments that came when he was tired or scared or when the gift took too much.
“Never use it for them,” she had whispered one night in a small room with a leaking roof. “They’ll take everything until there’s nothing left of you.”
Another night, when he had brought back a bird that had hit the window, she had held him while he bled from his nose.
“It costs us, baby. Every time. A piece of us. Don’t give it away for free.”
The night she didn’t come back, she had left him with Walter and a note in his pocket.
If they find you, run. If they catch you, remember you are not a tool. You are my son.
In the hospital room, with Noah breathing steadily in the bed and Walter standing guard, Ethan told William and Celeste what he remembered.
Celeste’s face stayed carefully blank, but her hands clenched in her lap.
William listened with the expression of a man watching his life rearrange itself into something unrecognizable.
When Ethan finished, William turned to his wife.
“You knew.”
Celeste’s voice was steady. “I knew the project existed. I didn’t know they would use a child like this.”
Walter laughed once, sharp and humorless. “You knew enough to keep the boy hidden when he could have saved your son without all this theater.”
The room was silent.
Noah made a small sound in his sleep.
Ethan looked at the baby and felt the pull of the gift again—the same pull that had brought him back from the edge. He could feel the life in the small body, fragile but holding.
“I didn’t do it for them,” Ethan said. “I did it because he was gone and I could bring him back.”
William looked at him with something close to awe and fear at the same time.
“What does it cost you?”
Ethan wiped a fresh line of blood from his nose.
“Pieces,” he said. “Every time. Pieces of me.”
Walter’s hand tightened on his shoulder.
“And they want those pieces,” he said. “That’s what Horizon Pavilion is. A place to take children like Ethan and turn their gifts into profit. Your father built it. Your wife helped run it. And now they want your son’s savior for the same machine.”
Celeste stood up.
“This is not—”
William cut her off with one look.
The truth about Navy—Elena—had been spoken.
May you like
The truth about Horizon Pavilion was next.
And the truth about what they would do to Ethan to keep the machine running was already in the room with them, waiting for the next word.
