Chapter 5 - JULIAN’S BLACK DOCUMENT CASE
“Do not go upstairs.”
I heard Avery breathing.
“Elena, he saw me.”
“Walk somewhere public.”
“He’s coming over.”
I stood in the hotel suite, uselessly gripping my cane while my entire body demanded that I physically reach someone I couldn’t reach.
Julian’s voice appeared faintly through Avery’s phone.
“Avery.”
She answered too brightly.
“Mr. Hart.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Going home.”
“At midnight?”
“I live here.”
Julian laughed.
Even through a phone connection, I recognized the charming version.
“I meant why are you standing outside?”
Avery said:
“Calling my sister.”
Good lie.
I had no idea whether she had a sister.
Julian:
“Have you spoken with Elena tonight?”
Silence.
My pulse pounded.
Avery answered:
“No.”
Another good lie.
Julian’s voice became warmer.
“She’s having a difficult episode.”
Episode.
There was the narrative again.
“We’re trying to keep people from feeding her paranoia.”
Avery said nothing.
Julian continued.
“Did she contact you?”
“No.”
“You’d tell me?”
“Yes.”
I hated that she had to say it.
Then I heard movement.
Avery whispered:
“He’s leaving.”
“Wait until he’s gone.”
Thirty seconds.
One minute.
Then she said:
“He went inside.”
“Your building?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can he access your apartment?”
“No.”
Pause.
“I think.”
“What is he carrying?”
“A black document case.”
Julian used one every day.
Usually contracts.
Board papers.
Tonight it could hold nothing important.
Or everything.
“Leave the block.”
“What about the terminal?”
“Not tonight.”
“If he finds it—”
“Where did you hide it?”
Silence.
“Don’t tell me.”
That mattered.
The fewer people who knew, the safer it was.
“Go.”
She did.
Twenty minutes later, Avery called from a twenty-four-hour diner.
Julian had left her building.
She returned only after asking her building superintendent to confirm nobody remained in the hallway.
Nothing obvious was missing from her apartment.
Then she noticed the closet.
The box containing L3-ENV-04 had been moved.
“Opened?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“The tape was different.”
Someone had entered.
“Terminal still there?”
“Yes.”
“Anything attached?”
She inspected it.
Then whispered:
“There’s a USB drive plugged into the rear service port.”
My skin prickled.
“Was that yours?”
“No.”
“Don’t connect the terminal to power.”
“I won’t.”
“Remove the drive.”
Pause.
“Okay.”
“What does it look like?”
“Black. No label.”
“Bag it.”
“I have antistatic sleeves.”
Of course she did.
Avery was exactly the kind of scientist who kept antistatic sleeves in her apartment.
“Julian may have planted it.”
“Or somebody else who entered before him.”
Evidence first.
I hated how often that rule protected people I wanted to blame.
My phone announced an incoming message.
Julian.
Where are you?
I almost laughed.
He had been outside Avery’s building minutes earlier.
Now he wanted to know where I was.
I replied:
Hotel.
He called immediately.
I answered.
“You left.”
“Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
“Walk.”
“Where?”
“I didn’t realize I needed permission.”
He ignored that.
“Cassandra thinks you transmitted proprietary information to investors.”
“I transmitted provenance verification.”
“That information belongs to HartVale.”
“So do the patents you stole.”
“Elena.”
His voice softened.
The dangerous version.
“I’m worried about you.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Then come back.”
Silence.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on my way.”
He was testing me.
I was testing him.
I ended the call.
Then contacted the hotel front desk.
“Please do not send Mr. Hart directly to my room.”
The clerk hesitated because the reservation listed both our names.
I added:
“He does not have my permission to enter.”
That was enough.
Small boundary.
Real one.
Ten minutes later, Avery sent photographs of the USB drive from multiple angles.
One image showed a microscopic inventory code.
I used screen-reader image recognition.
The code belonged to HartVale’s legal archive department.
Not Julian’s operations division.
Legal.
That changed the shape of the problem.
Why would a legal archive drive appear inside an environmental terminal hidden in Avery’s apartment?
Avery plugged the drive into an offline forensic machine.
Read-only mode.
One file.
EHH_ASSIGNMENT_FINAL.
My initials.
Patent assignment.
She opened metadata.
Created:
Two days before the explosion.
Modified:
Three hours after the explosion.
Signed:
2:18 a.m.
The document Julian showed the board.
But this was the working copy.
Avery found revision comments.
One from Cassandra:
Need biometric token after incident.
My pulse stopped.
After incident.
Not accident.
Not injury.
Incident.
Then another comment.
From Julian:
If E survives, use incapacity route.
I couldn’t breathe.
There was no ambiguity in that sentence.
If E survives.
May you like
They had discussed my survival before the explosion happened.
📖 Read the rest of the patent-assignment comments—and discover what Cassandra and Julian planned to do if I survived the laboratory “incident” in CHAPTER 6. 👇
