Chapter 8 - The Hospital Infiltration
The cruel ransom note felt like a physical knife twisting deeply into my gut.
Grant had intentionally staged the helicopter flight to completely distract me and buy himself more time.
He was playing a sick, twisted game of chess with the lives of my newborn children.
I crushed the note in my hand and turned fiercely toward Julian.
I told him we needed to go back to the exact place this nightmare started.
If Grant had moved the babies securely, there had to be an altered physical record hidden deep in the hospital archives.
We drove back to the towering hospital under the cover of the stormy night.
Julian used a stolen master keycard to bypass the main security desk and access the restricted sub-basement.
The air in the concrete archives was cold and smelled strongly of old paper and dust.
We frantically searched through hundreds of filing cabinets looking for the original birth certificates.
I finally found the heavy manila folder labeled with my last name and ripped it open.
The documents inside had been heavily redacted with thick black ink.
But holding the paper up to the harsh fluorescent light revealed a faint, embossed address hidden beneath the ink.
It was the address of a highly controversial, private biological research facility located on the edge of the city.
Grant was not just hiding the babies; he had transferred them to a completely unregulated medical lab.
I slammed the cabinet shut, completely terrified of what a monster like Grant was capable of doing.
Suddenly, a loud, metallic crash echoed from the dark hallway outside the archive room.
Julian immediately drew a concealed firearm from his jacket and stepped carefully in front of me.
We slowly pushed the archive door open and looked down the dimly lit corridor.
The kind nurse who had helped me escape earlier that day was lying on the cold floor in a pool of blood.
I rushed to her side, desperately pressing my hands against the deep wound on her shoulder.
She grabbed my shirt with a trembling, bloody hand and coughed violently.
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She warned me that Grant's personal fixer was heavily armed, roaming the building, and searching specifically for me.
Before I could ask her anything else, the lights in the entire sub-basement suddenly shut off, plunging us into total darkness.
