Chapter 5 - The Shadow on the Wall
"Sir," Marcus whispered from the vault doorway, his voice tense. "We have a security breach on the eastern perimeter."
I closed the journal, locking it inside my coat pocket, and turned around. "Where?"
"The security monitors on the third floor just went dark," Marcus said, drawing his Sig Sauer 9mm handgun. "Someone cut the main power lines to the security grid. The backup generators are kicking in, but we have about thirty seconds of blind spot."
"Leo," I said instantly, my heart dropping into my stomach. "They're after the boy."
We taking the stairs two at a time—a sensation that still felt bizarrely magnificent to my newly healed body—we rushed back up to the ground floor medical suite.
The hallway was pitch black, illuminated only by the faint red glow of the emergency exit signs.
As we reached the doorway of the medical room, a tall figure stepped out from the shadows. The intruder was clad in tactical black gear, a night-vision visor covering his face, holding a silenced submachine gun aimed directly at my chest.
"Don't move, Whitmore," a harsh, synthesized voice rasped through a speaker on his vest. "Hand over the kid, and you get to keep those newly healed legs."
Before I could react, Marcus stepped in front of me, firing two shots from his sidearm.
Thump! Thump!
The heavy 9mm rounds struck the intruder's tactical vest, knocking him backward against the wall. Marcus lunged forward, tackling the man to the floor, engaging in a brutal, bone-crunching hand-to-hand struggle.
"Charles! Go!" Marcus yelled, pinning the mercenary's arm to the floor.
I sprinted into the medical room.
Another masked figure was standing over the bed, reaching down to grab the sleeping boy. Leo stirred, his eyes snapping open, flashing a faint, luminous green in the dark.
"Get away from him!" I roared.
Seven years of sitting in a wheelchair had made my upper body immensely powerful. I grabbed a heavy iron IV stand from beside the bed and swung it with all the force of my body, striking the mercenary across the side of his helmet.
CRACK!
The force of the blow shattered the visor, sending the man crashing across the room, taking a glass cabinet full of medical supplies down with him. He hit the floor hard, unconscious, his mask slipping slightly to reveal a dark tattoo on his neck—a stylized snake wrapped around a broken syringe.
I recognized that emblem. It was the corporate crest of Vance Bio-Tech—a subsidiary company Arthur Vance had founded ten years ago using Whitmore seed capital.
Leo sat up on the bed, gasping for air, looking terrified.
"Uncle... Charles?" he stammered, his small voice trembling.
I froze. "You... you know who I am?"
Leo reached into his torn pocket and pulled out a worn, folded piece of paper, handing it to me with shaking fingers.
I unfolded it under the emergency red lights. It was a hand-drawn map of Manhattan, with the Plaza Hotel circled in red ink. At the bottom, written in the same elegant script as the photograph inside the watch, was a note:
Leo, my sweet boy. If I do not return by midnight, take the watch and find this man at the hotel. He is your uncle Charles. Show him the watch, heal his legs so he knows you are real, and tell him that Arthur Vance has taken me to the Blackwood Facility. He is the only man strong enough to save us.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I clutched the note to my chest.
Eleanor hadn't just survived. She had spent eight years waiting, watching, planning this desperate, miraculous gamble to reach me. She knew that as long as I was paralyzed, I was powerless against Arthur Vance's corporate empire.
So she had sent her son—a child carrying her own incredible, altered blood—to break my chains.
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"Uncle Charles," Leo whispered, reaching out to grab my sleeve. "They took my mommy five days ago. They said... they said they were going to harvest the rest of her serum before she dies."
"No one is dying, Leo," I swore, grabbing the child and pulling him into a tight, fierce embrace. "I promise you on my life. No one else is going to hurt your mother."
