Chapter 80 - The Voice in the Static
The concussive shockwave of the steam release rippled down the mountain face, shaking the trestle violently.
The heavy bronze wrench that Evelyn had jammed into the cog-drive mechanism sheared under the sudden torque. With a sound like a gunshot, the massive steel cog slipped its teeth.
The timber beneath my chest groaned, cracking longitudinally.
"Claire..." Evelyn whispered.
She looked down at the void beneath her boots, then up into my eyes. The cashmere of her collar was tearing under the strain, the expensive fibers snapping thread by thread beneath my bleeding fingers.
*Riiiip.*
"Claire!" Lily cried out behind me, sliding forward on the ice as the trestle shifted another inch. "Mom, the track is falling!"
"I can't pull her alone!" I screamed into the storm. "Evelyn, you have to use your feet! Find the crossbeam!"
Evelyn didn't look for the crossbeam. She stared directly into my eyes, and for the first time in my life, I saw the true Evelyn—stripped of wealth, stripped of the Vance name, stripped of the lies and the venom.
"It wasn't Father who built the drive, Claire," she whispered, her words cutting through the roar of the steam with terrifying clarity. "Arthur was just the executor. There’s someone else. Someone who wanted us to destroy each other."
"What are you talking about?!" I yelled.
"The voice on the silver drive..." Evelyn’s bloody lips parted in a ghastly, tragic smile as the fabric tore completely. "It was never Arthur's voice at the wedding. Listen to the static, Claire. *He's still listening.*"
The collar ripped entirely from her coat.
"NO!"
My hands closed on empty air.
Evelyn fell backward into the white fury of the storm, vanishing into the abyss without a sound, swallowed by the infinite chasm of the Great Gulf.
I lay collapsed across the icy ties, gasping for air, sobbing uncontrollably as Lily threw her arms around my neck, burying her face into my chest. The world was cold, empty, and silent save for the screaming wind and the distant roar of the summit steam.
It was over. The drive was gone. The locket was gone. Evelyn was gone.
Then, from inside the pocket of Arthur Vance’s wool coat—which I had pulled around Lily earlier—a sharp, high-pitched tone broke through the silence.
*BEEP.*
I froze.
I slowly reached into the pocket, pulling out the rugged, encrypted military-grade satellite receiver Arthur had carried.
The screen was glowing bright green.
The audio speaker on the unit crackled to life with a heavy burst of analog static.
Then, a voice spoke—deep, resonant, calm, and chillingly familiar, speaking with an aristocratic cadence that turned the blood in my veins to solid ice:
*"Splendidly played, Claire. Arthur always said you were the only one who inherited your mother's iron."*
I couldn't breathe. My hand shook violently as I pressed the receiver closer to my ear.
"Who is this?" I whispered into the microphone, my voice cracking.
The voice on the other end let out a low, amused chuckle that seemed to vibrate through the very granite of the mountain beneath us.
*"You spent eight years hiding from a family you thought was dead, little sister,"* the voice replied, smooth as silk and cold as a grave. *"Evelyn was merely the overture. The true wedding has only just begun. Check the eastern horizon. And don't look down."*
May you like
Far across the frozen valley, cutting through the dense storm clouds five miles away, a cluster of three blinding searchlights snapped on, beaming directly at the summit trestle where Lily and I sat alone on the broken tracks.
A long, low siren began to wail across the valley, and beneath our feet, the mountain began to shake again—not with steam, but with the steady, unmistakable approach of heavy rotors slicing through the blizzard.
