Chapter 5 - The Rot Inside
I stood on the rain-soaked tarmac, staring at the sky long after the jet had vanished into the clouds. Everything I had built over the last decade was suddenly stained with the blood of my own child. I pulled out my phone and immediately dialed Marcus, my head of global security. Marcus had been with me for five years, a former Navy SEAL I trusted with my life. I ordered him to ground the Apex Medical jet and deploy a tactical team to its destination immediately. There was a long, unsettling pause on the other end of the encrypted line. Marcus cleared his throat, his voice lacking its usual respectful tone. He told me that he could not comply with my orders today. I shouted into the phone, demanding to know what he meant by that. Marcus calmly explained that the board of directors had temporarily relieved me of my duties. They had cited erratic behavior and unauthorized financial audits. I realized in a flash of horror that the syndicate had already infiltrated my own boardroom. Marcus said he was sorry, but he worked for the real owners of Apex Medical now. The line clicked dead, leaving me listening to the hollow sound of dial tone. Sarah walked over to me, shivering in the freezing rain, and asked what we were going to do. I looked at the woman I loved, realizing we were completely isolated and hunted. I told her to take my car, drive to a crowded hotel in Manhattan, and pay for a room in cash. I promised her I would bring our daughter back, no matter how many people I had to destroy. Just as I turned to walk away, my phone vibrated with a new notification. It was an encrypted email containing a single GPS coordinate and a brief audio file. I pressed play, and Lily's terrified, crying voice echoed from the tiny speaker. She begged her daddy to come get her from the scary hospital. The email contained one final sentence written in bold red font. It warned me to come to the coordinates alone, or the doctors would start the extraction early.
