The antiseptic air of the hospital room was suffocating, thick with the scent of bleach and broken dreams. Clara sat on the edge of the stiff, plastic-covered bed, her shoulders shaking with the kind of primal, hollow grief that only a mother knows. She had been told her newborn daughter was gone—a tragic, unexplained complication.

Cole parked the truck in the shadows of the hospital's underground parking garage. He handed Sarah a secure USB drive and his backup weapon—a small, snub-nosed revolver.

Sarah slipped out of the truck. She moved through the shadows of the garage like a ghost, completely unbothered by the freezing concrete on her bare feet.

She found the service elevator. She typed in the sequence Maya had memorized. 4-9-9-1. The doors slid open silently.

The sub-basement didn't look like a hospital. It looked like a high-tech corporate server farm. Sleek black towers hummed with electricity behind reinforced glass walls.

Sarah approached the main terminal. She plugged in the USB drive, and the decryption software Cole had pre-loaded began to run.

Downloading Master Ledger... 10%... 30%...

"I have to admit, I underestimated you."