Chapter 6 - The Broken Father
Richard Mercer collapsed against the concrete wall, clutching his bleeding ribs.
His clothes were torn, and his face was severely bruised from a recent, brutal interrogation.
Lila cried out and tried to run to her father, but Valerie held her back instinctively.
She did not trust this man who had strapped a lethal weapon to his own child.
Richard held up his hands weakly, begging Valerie not to judge him before she knew the truth.
He explained that he had never programmed the vest to hurt his little girl.
The cartel had broken into their home at three in the morning and forced the device onto Lila.
They had designed the vest to inject a fatal neurotoxin if Richard did not deliver the stolen ledger by noon.
He had lied to Lila, telling her it was a magic shield, just to keep her heart rate calm so the sensors would not trigger early.
Valerie stared at him, realizing she had completely misjudged the situation based on the corrupt officer's lies.
Richard was not a monster using his daughter as leverage.
He was a desperate father who had hidden his child in the safest place he knew while he fought to destroy the cartel.
He pulled a small electronic keycard from his torn pocket.
He explained that this key would disable the lock and stop the needle from injecting the poison.
The red numbers on Lila's chest ticked down to five minutes.
Richard stumbled forward, his hands shaking violently as he tried to insert the card into the slot on the vest.
His fingers slipped, and he dropped the plastic card onto the dark floor.
He fell to his knees, his breathing becoming shallow and erratic.
Valerie dropped to the floor and frantically searched for the small card in the darkness.
She found it resting near the unconscious officer's boot.
She grabbed it and rushed back to Lila, perfectly aligning it with the slot on the black box.
She slid the card in, expecting the blinking red light to turn green.
Instead, the machine emitted a harsh, buzzing error tone.
The timer instantly dropped from four minutes down to sixty seconds.
Richard gasped in horror, realizing the cartel had remotely changed the encryption codes.
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The keycard was completely useless now.
A mechanical whirring sound came from the box as the silver needle prepared to drop.
