Chapter 3 - The Missing Pieces
I slammed my fist against the steering wheel as I sped toward the police precinct.
The little girl I had risked everything to save was now missing.
And somehow a highly classified biological weapon was involved.
I walked through the glass doors of the precinct and ignored the stares of my fellow officers.
I marched directly toward the captain's office at the end of the hallway.
Captain Miller was standing behind his desk looking completely exhausted.
Sitting on the leather couch across from him were two men in sharp black suits.
They did not look like standard FBI agents or local detectives.
They carried themselves with the rigid posture of private military contractors.
Captain Miller introduced them as agents from the Department of Defense.
The taller agent stepped forward and coldly demanded my complete report on the park incident.
He explicitly asked if I had recovered anything unusual from the scene of the attack.
I looked at the agent and instantly decided to lie.
I told him I only saw a snake bite my dog and immediately rushed to the vet.
The agent stared at me with dead eyes and clearly did not believe a single word.
He handed me a photograph of the mother and the little girl from the park.
He claimed the mother was a fugitive who had stolen highly sensitive government property.
He said she was dangerous and the child was simply a prop she used to blend in.
I looked at the photograph and realized something felt completely wrong about his story.
The mother at the park had been genuinely terrified for her daughter's life.
A cold-blooded thief would have used the chaos to escape instantly.
Instead she had stayed on her knees in the mud fighting a massive dog to save her child.
The agents ordered me to stand down and let their specialized team handle the recovery.
Captain Miller nodded in agreement and ordered me to take a two-week administrative leave.
I handed over my badge and my service weapon without putting up a fight.
I needed them to think I was backing off completely.
I walked out to my truck and locked the doors before pulling out the metallic snake tag I had kept hidden in my pocket.
I carefully peeled back the waterproof barcode sticker on the back of the metal plate.
Hidden underneath the adhesive was a microscopic SD card.
The mother had not dropped this by accident during the attack.
She had intentionally planted it there when she was pretending to hit Brutus.
I plugged the tiny drive into my encrypted police laptop sitting on the passenger seat.
A single video file popped up on the dark screen.
I clicked play and felt my blood turn entirely to ice.
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The video showed the little girl locked inside a glass medical observation room.
And standing over her with a syringe was Captain Miller.
