Chapter 12 - AURORA’S CAGEThe video played twelve times.
Not because I wanted to torture myself.
Because every frame mattered.
Aurora stood with perfect posture. Shoulders back. Hands relaxed. Chin level. She had been trained. Not educated. Not raised.
Trained.
Behind her, through a tall window, mountains rose under gray sky. Lake water glimmered below. The white room held no decorations except a single black chessboard on a glass table.
“She’s at the academy,” Keene said.
“Or Vivian wants us to think so,” my father replied.
Jules shook his head. “That is her room.”
We all looked at him.
“You’ve seen it?”
His mouth tightened. “We found each other online two years ago. Not names. Not at first. Patterns.”
“Patterns?” I asked.
“She played anonymous chess under the handle WhiteCrown17. I played violin streams under JMarch. She sent me a move from a game Lucien Marchand published in a student magazine. No one else would know it.”
My father looked stunned.
My children had found each other in the dark while every adult failed them.
“Did she know you were her brother?” I asked.
“Eventually. I think so. She never said it directly. She said direct truth creates traceable loyalties.”
That sounded like Vivian.
I hated that my daughter’s voice in my mind already belonged to someone else’s teachings.
Jules continued. “Aurora doesn’t speak like normal people. She speaks like every sentence has a lock on it.”
“Can you contact her?”
“She disappeared from the server six weeks ago.”
“When Vivian realized you were close,” Keene said.
Jules nodded.
My father’s analysts began building travel options. Federal channels. Diplomatic requests. Swiss warrants. Private extraction routes that Agent Keene immediately rejected.
“We do this legally,” she said.
My father gave her a look. “Vivian does not recognize legal.”
“I’m aware. But if you storm a Swiss school with private armed men, Vivian wins the narrative before we land.”
“She has my granddaughter.”
“And if you start an international incident, she keeps her.”
They stared at each other.
For once, Keene was right and my father knew it.
I turned to Jules.
“What would make Aurora leave?”
He looked at the frozen video of his sister.
“Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That Vivian lied.”
I almost laughed. There were mountains of proof.
Jules saw that and shook his head.
“Not documents. Vivian trained her to distrust documents. She says paper belongs to whoever owns the printer.”
“Then what?”
He hesitated.
“A memory.”
My heart clenched.
“She was a newborn when Vivian took her.”
“Not Aurora’s memory,” Jules said. “Lucien’s.”
He opened his violin case and removed a small folded page.
“Aurora once asked me about a song. She said Vivian hated it. She said when she was very small, someone used to hum it in nightmares. Vivian told her it was hospital noise.”
I took the page.
It was sheet music.
I recognized the melody instantly.
Not with my mind.
With my body.
Lucien had written it for me in Geneva. He used to hum it against my stomach when the twins moved beneath his hand.
The room blurred.
“He called it Morning for Three,” I whispered.
Jules looked at me.
His walls cracked.
“You remember?”
I nodded.
For the first time, my son stepped closer.
Not into my arms.
Not yet.
But closer.
“We send her that,” he said.
Keene frowned. “Vivian will intercept it.”
“Not if I play it live,” Jules replied. “On the old server. Aurora will recognize the pattern.”
My father shook his head. “That exposes you.”
Jules looked at him with cold amusement.
“I’ve been exposed since birth.”
He set the violin beneath his chin.
The first notes rose into the room, fragile and devastating.
I remembered rain.
Lucien laughing.
A hand on my stomach.
Two lives turning beneath my heart.
May you like
And across an ocean, perhaps my daughter would hear the one thing Vivian could not forge.
Love before language.
Related Stories
