Chapter 18 - Project Lisa.
Project Lisa contained forty-three years of records.
Medical tests.
Childhood photographs.
School reports.
Psychological assessments.
Lisa stared at the earliest document.
SUBJECT BORN HEALTHY.
POTENTIAL BIOLOGICAL AUTHENTICATOR CONFIRMED.
Her father had signed it.
So had Margaret.
Lisa felt numb.
“They planned this from birth.”
Michael shook his head.
“Dad designed the authentication later.”
“Then why was I being evaluated?”
He opened another file.
SUCCESSION CANDIDATE.
Lisa read silently.
Gray Lantern’s founders had always intended the system to survive them.
Children became potential custodians.
Not soldiers.
Not officers.
Family.
Lisa looked toward Margaret, now handcuffed beside Cole.
“You were going to give this to me.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Thomas wanted a successor.”
“I wanted the program buried.”
“Yet you built Orchard.”
“To dismantle it slowly.”
Lisa stared at her.
“You cannot dismantle power slowly.”
Margaret looked away.
Michael opened another document.
His name appeared beside Lisa’s.
MICHAEL HALE.
PRIMARY SUCCESSION.
Lisa frowned.
“You were first.”
Michael nodded.
“That’s why they recruited me into intelligence.”
“You joined willingly?”
“At first.”
Lisa absorbed another uncomfortable truth.
Michael had not simply been an innocent brother kidnapped by monsters.
He had stepped into their world voluntarily.
“I believed Dad’s stories.”
Michael continued.
“He said Gray Lantern saved soldiers abandoned during covert missions.”
“Sometimes it did.”
“Then I saw the accounts.”
“The blackmail.”
“The disappearances.”
“So you tried to leave.”
“Yes.”
“Margaret offered me a choice.”
He looked at their mother.
“Disappear temporarily, or Rebecca would target Lisa.”
Margaret whispered.
“I believed you would be gone six months.”
Michael laughed.
“Nine years.”
“I lost control.”
“No.”
“You never had control.”
Lisa looked at the final file.
It had been updated recently.
Three weeks earlier.
PROJECT LISA - FINAL TRANSFER.
Approved by someone using Thomas Hale’s credentials.
Lisa frowned.
“Dad is dead.”
Michael checked the signature.
“This isn’t forged.”
Cole leaned closer.
“What does that mean?”
Michael stared at the certificate chain.
“The signing key requires physical hardware.”
Lisa remembered the second object hidden in her father’s seal.
“Someone has Dad’s hardware key.”
Ryan spoke from behind them.
“Rebecca.”
Rebecca had been arrested at the gala.
Cole called investigators.
Minutes later, the answer arrived.
The hardware found on Rebecca was not Thomas’s.
It belonged to Evelyn.
Lisa looked at Margaret.
“Who has Dad’s key?”
Margaret’s silence said enough.
Michael stepped toward her.
“Who?”
Margaret finally answered.
“Thomas.”
Lisa stared.
“My father is dead.”
Margaret shook her head.
“No.”
The room went completely still.
Evelyn began laughing softly.
Lisa turned toward her.
“You knew.”
Evelyn’s smile was cruel.
“Your family truly excels at funerals without bodies.”
Lisa looked back at Margaret.
“You said you killed him.”
“I shot him.”
“I thought he died.”
“Rebecca removed the body before authorities arrived.”
“Years later I discovered there was no body.”
Michael’s voice tightened.
“Where is he?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
Lisa looked at the Project Lisa update.
Three weeks ago.
Her father’s authentication key had been used.
Someone had approved the final transfer.
Someone who might be Thomas Hale.
Lisa sat down.
Her dead mother had been alive.
Her missing brother was alive.
Rebecca Voss was alive.
Now her father might be alive too.
Ryan crouched beside the laptop.
“There’s an IP origin.”
Michael traced it.
The location appeared.
Washington, D.C.
More precisely, a privately leased office building two blocks from the Pentagon.
Cole recognized the address.
“That building houses defense oversight contractors.”
Lisa looked at him.
“Which one?”
Cole hesitated.
“Office of Legacy Systems Review.”
Michael went pale.
“What?”
“That office investigated Gray Lantern twenty years ago.”
Lisa frowned.
“And closed the case?”
Cole nodded.
“After the lead investigator concluded Gray Lantern no longer existed.”
Lisa already knew what came next.
“Who was the investigator?”
Cole turned the screen toward her.
A photograph appeared.
Older.
Gray-haired.
Different name.
But Lisa knew the eyes.
Director Henry Lawson.
Lisa whispered.
“Dad.”
May you like
Her father had not merely survived.
He had spent twenty years working inside the agency meant to investigate his own creation.
