Chapter 6 - MARCUS’S CHOICE
Security footage showed Marcus carrying the cast into an ambulance bay.
He entered a white van willingly.
No struggle.
His father, David Cole, drove the vehicle.
David had been presumed dead after the Saint Mercy flood.
Another false death.
Marcus knew his father might be alive. He had received anonymous messages for months but told no one.
David promised to explain what happened to Marcus’s younger sister, Emily, who disappeared at age six.
Marcus took the cast because wires inside it contained coordinates to Emily’s location.
He chose his sister over evidence.
The decision was understandable.
It also compromised Daniel’s case.
Federal agents traced the van to an abandoned water-treatment plant.
Marcus was found alone.
The cast was gone.
His father left a note.
EMILY IS PATIENT ZERO.
The program began with Emily Cole.
She suffered a rare nerve condition. Samuel Vale developed experimental stimulation devices to restore movement.
The early trial appeared successful.
Then the treatment caused severe complications.
Vale hid the result and continued.
Emily survived but remained inside long-term medical custody.
David became Vale’s driver in exchange for access to her.
He delivered other children to keep one daughter alive.
Marcus spent his life believing both were dead.
Again, love became a lever.
Agents found Emily at a private medical residence.
She was thirty-eight.
Unable to speak but mentally alert.
She communicated through eye tracking.
Her first statement accused David and Vale.
Her second asked for Marcus.
She did not ask for her father.
David had preserved her life while helping destroy others.
Both truths existed.
Marcus returned to the hospital under investigation.
He admitted removing evidence.
He accepted suspension.
Daniel asked why everyone kept making secret plans around him.
No one had a good answer.
We began including him in age-appropriate decisions.
Who entered his room.
Which procedures happened.
When police asked questions.
He was eight.
He could not control everything.
But he could be told the truth available to him.
Then the recovered cast appeared at a local television station.
Thomas sent it with a video.
He announced that Vale’s network would be exposed live in twenty-four hours.
The cast contained more microfilm.
But it also contained a sealed biological hazard.
Thomas warned that opening it outside controlled conditions could release something dangerous.
The station evacuated.
A bomb-and-biohazard team secured the package.
Samuel Vale responded through another video.
He called Thomas unstable and claimed the cast contained only a harmless training sample.
Two criminals offered competing truths.
We needed evidence.
The hazard tested positive for a dormant bacterial culture genetically matched to Daniel’s infection.
Vale had engineered the sepsis risk.
Thomas had delivered the culture to the media.
May you like
Exposure was now a threat to the public.
The revenge campaign had crossed another line.
