Chapter 4 - The Ghost in the Shadows
I stared down the dark barrel of the Mayor's gun, completely paralyzed by her betrayal.
She was the woman who had practically raised me after my mother's sudden death.
She laughed softly and told me that the syndicate needed a scapegoat for tonight's massacre.
She claimed that a rogue, traumatized police sergeant made the perfect patsy for the media.
I slowly raised my hands, desperately trying to calculate a way to disarm her.
Suddenly, a massive spotlight from the botanical garden's ceiling shattered into a million pieces.
The stage was plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
Three suppressed gunshots echoed silently through the massive glass room.
I dropped to the floor, fully expecting to feel bullets tearing through my tactical vest.
Instead, the Mayor's three heavily armed bodyguards collapsed dead onto the stage around me.
The Mayor screamed in absolute terror and dropped her weapon to flee into the shadows.
A tall figure dropped gracefully from the steel rafters and landed quietly beside me.
It was David, the little girl's father, holding a smoking, high-powered sniper rifle.
I pointed my gun at his chest, completely baffled by how he had escaped the locked precinct.
David gently lowered the barrel of my gun with his heavily scarred hand.
He told me that he was actually an undercover federal agent investigating the syndicate for five years.
He swore that the woman sitting in the precinct was not the real Claire.
He revealed that the syndicate had kidnapped his real wife and replaced her with an engineered assassin.
He grabbed my arm and said we had to get back to the precinct immediately to save Lily.
I asked him why Lily was in immediate danger if she was already locked in a secure holding cell.
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David looked at me with tears in his eyes and delivered a chilling truth.
He whispered that Lily was not an innocent victim, but the most lethal biological weapon the syndicate had ever created.
