Chapter 6 - Warehouse 214
The warehouse looked abandoned from the outside.
Broken windows.
Rust-stained walls.
No company sign.
But the number above the loading dock was freshly painted.
214.
Detective Ortiz ordered Emily to remain behind the police vehicles.
Emily agreed.
Then she slipped away through a side gate while officers prepared to enter the front.
The silver key opened a narrow steel door at the rear of the building.
Inside, fluorescent lights buzzed over a clean hallway that looked nothing like the ruined exterior.
Emily heard voices.
Robert’s came first.
“You promised the implant wouldn’t hurt her.”
A woman answered.
“The infection is unfortunate, but the data is more valuable than the subject.”
Subject.
They were talking about Maya as if she were laboratory equipment.
Emily followed the voices to a glass-walled room.
Maya lay unconscious on a medical table.
Robert stood beside her with a handgun.
Across from him was a woman wearing red-framed glasses.
Dr. Celia Voss.
Emily recognized her from company charity events. Celia was chief research officer at Robert’s medical-device firm.
On a nearby monitor, lines of data moved beneath Maya’s name.
Dr. Voss held out her hand.
“The key, Robert.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Then your wife does.”
Emily stepped from the hallway.
“She does.”
Robert spun around.
“Emily, leave.”
She held up the key.
“Step away from Maya.”
Celia smiled calmly.
“You have no idea what that opens.”
“No,” Emily said. “But you’re terrified I’ll find out.”
Robert’s hand shook around the gun.
“I was trying to protect our family.”
“You put something inside our daughter.”
“I didn’t know they’d use her.”
Celia’s smile disappeared.
“You volunteered her because the company was failing.”
Emily’s eyes moved to Robert.
His face collapsed.
The truth was worse than she imagined.
Robert had traded Maya’s body for money.
Sirens sounded outside.
Celia lunged toward the monitor and struck a command.
A countdown appeared.
May you like
SYSTEM PURGE: 60 SECONDS.
👉 Emily had reached Maya, but unless she found where the key belonged, every record proving what Robert had done would disappear.
