Chapter 6 - The Asylum Of Shadows
The GPS coordinates led me deep into the dense, untamed forests of the Adirondack Mountains. I parked my vehicle two miles away from the target location to avoid triggering any perimeter sensors. I had spent the last three hours acquiring a tactical vest, a suppressed rifle, and night-vision goggles from an old contact. The rain had stopped, leaving a heavy, oppressive fog settling over the decaying landscape. I crept through the damp underbrush until the massive silhouette of the target building emerged from the mist. It was an abandoned state asylum, a relic from the early nineteen-fifties with crumbling brick walls and rusted iron bars. There were no lights on the upper floors, but a faint, clinical white glow leaked from the basement windows. I used a pair of bolt cutters to quietly snip through the chain-link fence at the rear of the property. I slipped through a broken cellar door, the smell of mold and strong antiseptic burning my nostrils. The interior was a maze of rotting corridors and reinforced steel doors. I moved with absolute silence, relying on my military training from a lifetime ago. As I approached the main laboratory wing, I heard the faint sound of a heart monitor beeping steadily. I raised my rifle, checking my corners as I approached a heavy wooden door at the end of the hall. I could hear Lily softly humming the lullaby I sang to her every night. My heart ached with a desperate need to burst into the room and hold her. I kicked the door open, sweeping the room with my laser sight, ready to kill anyone inside. But the room was completely empty, save for a sterile medical bed and a laptop sitting on a metal cart. The humming was a pre-recorded audio loop playing from the computer speakers. I stepped forward to inspect the laptop, my blood running cold with sudden realization. Taped beneath the metal cart was a block of C4 explosive wired to a digital timer. The bright red numbers ticked down to exactly three seconds.
