“Daddy put something inside my sister’s belly,” a seven-year-old girl told the desk officer. Then she clarified, “He made her swallow it and said not to tell.” Her twin curled around her stomach while the first girl produced an empty medicine syringe hidden inside her shoe. The officer called an ambulance and entered the pharmacy code into his computer. When their father’s name appeared as the prescriber, he quietly locked the station doors.

The Pontiac Municipal Airfield was an isolated strip of tarmac surrounded by low rust-colored hangars and vast stretches of flat farmland. The rain had turned into a thick, swirling fog that reduced visibility to less than fifty yards.

Daniel drove his cruiser through the open maintenance gate, his tires spraying gravel against the chain-link fence. High-intensity floodlights mounted on the primary control tower cut yellow beams through the white mist, casting long, eerie shadows across the wet tarmac.

Near Hangar 4, a small white twin-engine Piper Navajo sat with its propellers spinning slowly, its navigation lights blinking red and green against the dark sky.

A single figure in a long dark overcoat was standing near the boarding ladder, loading two heavy aluminium medical cases into the aircraft’s luggage compartment.

Daniel stopped the cruiser thirty feet away, swinging the car sideways to block the plane's forward taxi path. He slammed the gear shift into park, threw open his door, and stood behind the metal frame, his sidearm raised over the roof.

"Michael Carter!" Daniel's voice roared through the noise of the twin engines. "Turn off the aircraft and step away from the ladder!"

Michael stopped. He didn't drop the case he was holding. He set it carefully inside the hatch, turned around slowly, and looked across the tarmac at Daniel.

He was no longer wearing his silver wire-rimmed glasses. The rain was streaming down his face, pasting his dark hair across his forehead. He looked smaller without his immaculate suit, but his eyes were filled with an intense, unyielding conviction.

"You're too late, Officer," Michael called out, his voice fighting against the roar of the propellers. "The data is already uploaded to a secure cloud server in Zurich. The research is complete."

"Step away from the plane, Michael!" Daniel repeated, taking two steps out from behind the door, keeping his sights centered on the middle of Michael's chest. "It's over! We seized the basement! We have the ledger! We have your assistant in custody!"

Michael let out a short, dry laugh that was lost in the wind.

"You think this was about cruelty?" Michael yelled, taking one step down the boarding ladder. "You think I did this out of malice? My wife died of an untreatable genetic cardiac anomaly, Officer Reed! The medical establishment spent five years giving her sugar pills while her heart deteriorated to nothing!"

He pounded his fist against the aluminium hull of the plane.

"I spent four years synthesizing FL-892! It is the only compound in existence capable of re-regulating cell membrane voltage in terminal pediatric cases! But the FDA board refused my human trial application! They wanted ten years of primate testing! Ten years!"

"So you tested it on your own seven-year-old daughters?" Daniel said, taking another step forward, his boots sloshing through the standing water on the runway.

"They carry the exact same genetic marker!" Michael shouted, his voice cracking with a terrifying mixture of scientific madness and paternal justification. "Olivia would have developed full cardiac failure by her tenth birthday! I was saving her life! I was calibrating the exact therapeutic threshold before the onset of permanent tissue damage!"

"You almost killed her tonight, Michael!" Daniel yelled back. "She was on a defibrillator thirty minutes ago because you gave her three times the lethal limit of an unapproved chemical!"

"A minor calculation error in the oral vehicle suspension!" Michael snapped, dismissing the near-fatal incident with a wave of his hand. "A variable I could have corrected in Phase II if you hadn't broken into my precinct and stolen the clinical sample!"

"You're not a doctor anymore, Michael," Daniel said, his voice cold and steady. "You're a predator. And you're under arrest."

Michael looked at Daniel for a long, silent moment. Then, his eyes shifted down toward his right coat pocket.

"I can't let you stop the work, Officer," Michael whispered.

His hand reached into his coat pocket.

Daniel saw the dark shape of a compact handgun clearing the heavy wool fabric.

Bang!

A single gunshots echoed across the open airfield, cutting through the roar of the Piper Navajo's engines.

Michael froze. His arm stiffened, his eyes opening wide in sudden, shocked surprise.

He dropped his weapon onto the wet tarmac. It skidded across the asphalt, coming to rest near Daniel's boots.

Michael reached up with his left hand, pressing his fingers against his shoulder, where a bright red circle was rapidly blooming through his charcoal coat. He took two stumbling steps backward, lost his balance on the wet boarding ladder, and collapsed onto the tarmac.

Daniel moved instantly, kicking the dropped firearm twenty feet away, kneeling over Michael, and pinning his uninjured arm behind his back. He snapped the heavy steel handcuffs over his wrist with two loud, final clicks.

"Dispatch," Daniel said into his shoulder mic, his breath coming in heavy, white plumes in the freezing air. "Unit 314. Suspect in custody at Pontiac Airfield. Requesting an emergency medical transport unit for a single gunshot wound to the upper left shoulder. Suspect is stable."

He pulled Michael up into a sitting position against the plane's tire.

Michael looked up at Daniel, his face pale, his lips trembling as blood soaked through his coat.

"They... they won't survive without the therapeutic protocol..." Michael gasped, his voice barely a whisper.