Chapter 6 These Children Seem Familiar
The warehouse door slammed shut, echoing through the small, dark space.
Zoe and Liam were shoved inside together.
It was a cramped storage room, barely ten square meters, with no windows and no lights.
Zoe stood frozen, clutching her worn-out stuffed bunny tightly.
She couldn't decide whether to stand or squat, her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps.
After a moment, she crouched in a corner, bowing her head and biting her fingers hard.
"Zoe!" Liam called out softly, immediately crouching down to stop her.
But Zoe recoiled instinctively, like a startled animal ready to flee.
"Stop biting, listen to me... stop biting." Liam was on the verge of tears.
He didn't dare to pull Zoe forcefully, so he coaxed her gently, "Zoe, it's me, it's Liam, it's Liam."
But Zoe seemed not to hear, as if she were in a trance.
Liam took a deep breath, leaned against the cold, damp concrete wall, and began to tap the floor lightly.
The rhythm was steady, reminiscent of how Lena used to soothe them when they were little.
Then, he began to hum a familiar lullaby softly.
Zoe's movements slowed, the force of her biting lessened, and though there was still blood at the corner of her mouth, her emotions visibly calmed.
"Zoe, can you hear me? I'm here."
Zoe finally released her teeth, her voice thick with tears as she moved closer to Liam, resting her small head on Liam's shoulder and clutching his sleeve tightly.
"It's so dark here."
"I know." Liam hugged her gently, "It's okay, I'm here."
Outside the warehouse, the door to the surveillance room at the end of the hallway slid open silently.
A man stepped inside, the metal door closing behind him, sealing off all outside noise.
The air was tinged with the faint smell of disinfectant, mixed with the subtle hum of electronic equipment.
The overhead light was dim, seemingly adjusted to cast the room in a nearly oppressive quiet.
He walked to the sink in the corner and stood still.
After a moment of silence, he raised his hand and unbuttoned the first button of his collar, then the second.
His long fingers touched the edge of his mask, pressing lightly—
The sound of the clasp releasing was particularly clear in the silence.
The silver-gray metal mask was removed, revealing a face with sharp features.
The mirror reflected Killian's face, with sharp brows, a high nose, and a jawline as hard as chiseled stone.
He had just taken off his gloves when his phone began to vibrate incessantly, Isabella's name flashing on the screen.
Killian frowned but didn't answer.
Within three seconds, the phone rang again, persistently.
He answered coldly, "What is it?"
"Killian, where are you? I've been waiting downstairs for almost an hour. Didn't we agree on dinner?"
"I didn't agree."
"You said last time!" Isabella's tone was a mix of coquettishness and frustration, "You weren't like this before..."
"Isabella." Killian interrupted her, his voice low, "Don't forget your place."
At that moment, the voices of Liam and Zoe came through the monitor.
Killian looked up at the screen, but before he could take a closer look, Isabella's voice, both angry and anxious, came through the phone.
"Is that a kid talking over there?"
Killian stayed silent.
"Is it those wild kids from the airport? Why are you with them? Did that woman bother you? She..."
Killian didn't listen any further and hung up.
He looked at the two children on the monitor, his gaze darkening.
In the footage, Liam and Zoe were huddled in the corner of the warehouse, like two small shadows.
He wasn't entirely unfamiliar with these two children.
At the airport that day, the boy who had rushed out to shield the woman, and the child with vacant eyes, clutching a toy.
It was them.
Killian's gaze lingered on Liam's face for a few seconds.
Something was off.
From the moment he first saw her, he had sensed something unusual.
He had trespassed into a restricted area, tried to extract information, and might even have been acting to gain sympathy...
By protocol, he should have ordered her removal immediately, without a second glance.
But when those eyes looked at him, and he asked in that half-doubtful tone, "Do you have a family?"
For a moment, he had wanted to answer "yes."
Absurd. It was utterly absurd.
He despised any form of emotion.
Yet just now, he hadn't been angry, and even the command "take them away" had been... unusually gentle.
So gentle, it was as if he was afraid of startling them.
Afraid?
The moment the word surfaced in his mind, Killian's eyes darkened.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror, the furrow in his brow deepening.
"Liam... Zoe..."
He whispered the names.
He was certain he had never heard of these children before, yet something in his mind was stirring, like a broken circuit, like a jammed gear, grinding against his consciousness repeatedly.
Killian slowly raised his hand, pinching the bridge of his nose, pressing hard with his thumb and forefinger.
Pain.
The kind that no painkiller could alleviate—a dull ache, as if something forcibly removed was trying to grow back.
This wasn't the first time he had felt this way.
In the past, he had always suppressed it, but this time was different.
It was as if he had encountered a similar presence before, had this reaction before.
He instinctively wanted to deny it, but a memory from a few years ago inexplicably flashed through his mind.
That night, he couldn't recall the details, nor did he have any clear images, only that he felt like he had been drugged, his body burning with an almost uncontrollable heat.
The next morning, the sheets were in disarray, but there was no sign anyone else had been in the room.
Isabella had appeared at the right moment, claiming they had been together.
He was half-convinced, with no other suspects.
Even the surveillance seemed tampered with, revealing nothing.
Over the years, he had no further reactions to Isabella, nor any desire to touch her. But the memory of that night was vivid, so he allowed Isabella to stay around.
Later, he chalked it up to a setup at a drinking party and didn't dwell on it.
But now, thinking of the woman at the airport, for some reason, that inexplicable heat began to rise again, inching up from his lower abdomen, spreading to his nerve endings.
Killian closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down, only to find his throat dry.