Chapter 5 - The Underground Hacker
Mark hit the wet pavement hard, rolling aggressively to absorb the brutal impact of the fall.
Horns blared wildly and tires screeched as civilian cars swerved violently to avoid running over the escaping fugitive.
Mark scrambled to his feet, ignoring the intense pain in his shoulder, and sprinted blindly down a narrow, trash-filled alleyway.
He heard the police officers shouting furiously behind him, their heavy boots splashing through the puddles in hot pursuit.
He ducked into a chaotic, crowded underground subway station, using the thick sea of late-night commuters as a physical shield.
Mark managed to slip onto a departing train just seconds before the doors hissed completely shut, leaving the angry cops on the platform.
He collapsed into an empty corner seat, hiding his handcuffed wrists under his soaked, ruined tuxedo jacket.
He needed help from someone who existed entirely outside of Richard's vast circle of corrupt influence.
Mark rode the train to the darkest, most dangerous sector of the city, navigating the shadows until he reached an old, decaying arcade.
He walked past the broken pinball machines and knocked aggressively on a heavy steel door hidden in the back room.
A small viewing panel slid open, revealing a pair of highly paranoid eyes staring back at him.
"I need your help, Jax," Mark whispered urgently, showing his handcuffed wrists to the camera.
The steel door opened quickly, and a heavily tattooed man pulled Mark inside, immediately locking the deadbolts.
Jax was a brilliant, reclusive underground hacker who owed Mark a massive life debt from their college days.
Using heavy bolt cutters, Jax snapped the police handcuffs off Mark's bleeding, raw wrists.
"Your face is plastered on every single news channel in the country right now, Mark," Jax warned, handing him a clean, dry shirt.
"They are saying you had a psychotic break at the altar and murdered your own child in a fit of rage."
Mark slammed his fist angrily against a nearby server rack, furious at how easily Richard manipulated the public narrative.
"I need you to hack into Vanessa's phone and track her exact location from the last three hours," Mark demanded, pacing the room.
Jax immediately went to work, his fingers flying at blinding speeds across a massive bank of glowing computer monitors.
"Her phone is heavily encrypted, but she made one massive, careless mistake," Jax announced triumphantly.
"She connected to a private Wi-Fi network that belongs to a heavily guarded psychiatric facility fifty miles outside the city limits."
The facility was called the Blackwood Institute, a highly controversial asylum completely funded by Richard's massive corporate empire.
"Why would they take a seven-year-old child to a psychiatric hospital?" Mark asked, a new wave of terror washing over him.
Jax pulled up the hidden architectural blueprints of the imposing, fortress-like hospital building.
"Because Blackwood doesn't just treat patients, Mark; they make people permanently disappear off the grid," Jax explained grimly.
Mark grabbed a discarded, heavy metal crowbar from Jax's workbench, his eyes burning with absolute, deadly determination.
"I am going to tear that entire hospital apart brick by brick," Mark vowed fiercely.
Jax tossed Mark a small, encrypted radio earpiece.
"I will guide you through their security system, but Mark, there is something completely horrific you need to see in these files."
Jax turned the monitor toward Mark, displaying a highly classified patient manifest stolen from the hospital's database.
Right beneath Lily's newly registered name was another patient listed as highly restricted, completely isolated in the basement ward.
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The patient's name listed on the screen was Elena.
That was the exact name of Mark's wife, Lily's mother, who had supposedly died in a tragic car accident five years ago.
