Chapter 11 - The Father Ethan Buried at Seventeen
Ethan Mercer’s father had been dead for twenty-three years.
At least that was the sentence Ethan had carried since adolescence.
Thomas Mercer.
Software engineer.
Brilliant.
Difficult.
Dead from a sudden cardiac event when Ethan was seventeen.
Ethan remembered the funeral.
Unlike Claire’s, there had been a body.
He had touched his father’s cold hand.
There was no ambiguity.
“He’s dead.”
Nathan nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then how did he create JANUS?”
“Because JANUS wasn’t created for disaster recovery.”
Nathan sat opposite his brother.
“It was created for us.”
Thomas Mercer had worked on identity-resilience systems for government contractors in the early digital era.
He feared centralized identity.
One database error could erase access to money, property, medical care.
So he built redundant identities for his sons.
Not fake people.
Emergency administrative mirrors.
Ethan’s was ELIAS.
Nathan’s was NOAH.
Their father called the architecture Janus.
After Thomas died, Nathan found portions of the code.
Years later he showed them to Arthur Vale.
Arthur saw commercial potential.
Nathan rebuilt it.
“I thought I invented most of it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
Ethan looked at the screen.
“Who turned it criminal?”
“That’s what Claire was trying to learn.”
They now had layers.
Thomas created the architecture.
Nathan resurrected it.
Arthur commercialized it.
Northstar expanded it.
Someone weaponized it.
Each person inherited a tool without fully understanding what the previous person intended.
Eleanor walked to the window.
“My father knew Thomas.”
Nathan nodded.
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“You let me marry Ethan without telling either of us?”
“I didn’t know you two were dating until after it became serious.”
“That is not an answer.”
Nathan looked at her.
“I was ashamed.”
Of what?
Not creating JANUS.
Selling access.
Nathan admitted that years earlier, desperate after a failed company, he sold portions of the architecture to a private investor.
He believed they wanted identity continuity.
They wanted plausible human shadows.
“I took the money.”
Ethan stared at him.
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“And Claire died because of what you sold.”
Nathan’s eyes filled.
“Maybe.”
That word carried eleven years of guilt.
Then Lily walked toward the old family photograph on the table.
“Daddy?”
Ethan turned.
She pointed at Thomas Mercer.
“I saw him.”
No one moved.
“What?”
“The old man.”
“When?”
“Today.”
Ethan crouched.
“Where?”
“Upstairs.”
“That’s impossible.”
“He was in Mommy’s room.”
Eleanor stared.
“There was no old man.”
“Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
Lily pointed at Thomas.
“Like him.”
Ethan’s pulse accelerated.
Children confused faces.
Photographs.
Age.
Fear.
He knew that.
Yet Lily continued:
“He gave me the green dress.”
Eleanor’s mouth opened.
“I thought the dress was delivered.”
“It was on my bed,” Lily said. “He said Mommy wanted me to wear it.”
Ethan looked at the photograph again.
Thomas would now be seventy-three.
The man Lily saw had gray hair.
Could be anyone.
Then Lily added:
“He called Daddy ‘Little Hawk.’”
Ethan stopped breathing.
Nathan stood.
Only their father had used that nickname.
Never publicly.
Never in letters.
Never around Eleanor.
Ethan had not heard it since he was seventeen.
Voss asked Lily gently:
“What exactly did the man say?”
Lily thought.
“He said, ‘Little Hawk will catch you. He always catches what people throw away.’”
Ethan closed his eyes.
The sentence was horrifying.
It suggested someone knew the fall would happen.
Someone believed Ethan would save Lily.
But that did not mean Thomas was alive.
It meant someone knew Thomas intimately.
Nathan suddenly walked toward the hidden passage.
“My father kept recordings.”
“What?”
“Voice journals. Hundreds.”
“So someone could know the nickname.”
“Yes.”
Ethan felt relief.
Then Nathan finished:
“But there was one thing he never recorded.”
“What?”
“That sentence.”
Ethan looked at him.
May you like
Nathan’s face had gone white.
“He said it to me the night before he died.”
