Chapter 4 - The Syndicate in the Shadows
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A digital voice chimed from the scanner: [DECRYPTION COMMENCED: 14%... 28%... BIOMETRIC SIGNATURE VERIFIED: ALTHEA STERLING, PH.D.]
“It’s still intact,” Dr. Hayes breathed, awe shining in his eyes behind his lenses. “Twenty-six years... the cellular matrix hasn't degraded by a single base pair.”
Before the scanner could reach fifty percent, the fire alarm above the ceiling tiles shrieked with ear-splitting ferocity.
WHEEE-OOO-WHEEE-OOO.
The fluorescent lights in the room flickered, dying out completely as the emergency red backup lighting bathed the ward in a bloody, ominous crimson glow.
The heavy intercom speaker on the wall crackled to life with the frantic voice of the chief dispatcher:
“Code Red. Level Seven lockdown initiated. All medical staff report to assigned muster stations. Exterior perimeter compromised at Ambulance Bay C.”
Dr. Hayes snapped his head toward the door. “They're here.”
“Already?” my mother gasped, trying to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, wincing in agony as her arthritic knee buckled beneath her weight. “It’s only been forty minutes!”
“Aegis maintains private tactical aviation charters at Teterboro Airport,” Dr. Hayes said, ripping the scanner from the stand and shoving it into his leather satchel. “Arthur has had private contractor teams stationed across the East Coast for two decades, waiting for your signature to ping a hospital system.”
I stepped toward the door, peering through the small reinforced wire-glass observation window.
The pre-op hallway was completely deserted. The nurses' station monitors were dark. At the far end of the corridor, near the heavy fire doors of Elevator Bank B, two men dressed in black tactical uniforms, carrying suppressed automatic carbines and ballistic vests bearing private security insignias, were moving down the hall with terrifying, military-trained discipline.
They weren't police. They weren't federal marshals.
They were corporate executioners.
“They aren't here to capture you, Althea,” Dr. Hayes whispered, locking the secondary mechanical deadbolt on the patient room door. “They know the data is in your skin. If Arthur extracts your tissue post-mortem, he still gets the blueprint.”
The realization hit me like an electric shock.
These people had killed my father. They had forced my mother to spend twenty-eight years living in fear, scrubbing floors, changing names, and hiding her brilliance in the shadows of an Ohio suburb.
And now, they had come to finish the slaughter.
I reached down, picked up the heavy chrome oxygen tank resting on the wheeled transport rack beside the bed, and weighed it in my hands.
“Julian, what are you doing?!” my mother cried, reaching for my shirt.
May you like
“They took twenty-six years from you, Mom,” I said, my voice dropping into a register of cold, absolute certainty I didn't know I possessed. “They aren't taking another day.”
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