Chapter 5 - Counter-Measures
A tall, lean figure dropped lightly onto the briefing room floor amidst a shower of dust and shattered acoustic paneling. Marcus Vance wore a dark tactical raincoat, a heavy utility belt, and a modified respirator mask covering his lower face. In his right hand, he carried an industrial electronic bypass device connected to a handheld terminal.
Through the tempered glass observation window of the corridor door, our eyes met.
“You’re out of your depth, Officer,” Vance’s voice rasped through his respirator speaker. “You think you're protecting them, but you are delaying the only treatment that can stabilize her system.”
“She’s in septic shock, Marcus!” I shouted back, keeping my handgun trained on his chest through the doorway. “Whatever chemical sequence you put in that syringe is killing her!”
“It is a synthetic protein binder!” Vance replied, taking a slow step forward, his hands raised in a calculating gesture. “It requires a secondary stabilizing catalyst within forty-five minutes of ingestion! If she doesn't receive the secondary dose, the cellular breakdown becomes irreversible!”
My mind raced. A two-part compound.
The first dose—the one Olivia swallowed—was only half of the biological equation. Without the second half, the compound broke down into a toxic agent within the liver and bloodstream. Vance hadn't come to kill them; he had come to administer part two because Emma’s escape had broken his timed protocol.
“Where is the catalyst?” I asked, keeping my finger resting lightly along the trigger guard.
May you like
“In my belt canvas,” Vance said, pointing down to a sealed silver vial tucked into his vest. “Override the corridor latch and let me to her. If you shoot me, the atmospheric lock will trigger, and the oxygen in that sealed holding block will be pumped out in under three minutes.”
He wasn't bluffing. The panel beside the holding cell door was flashing a ominous yellow maintenance light—he had wired the building’s life-support controls directly to his vital monitoring app.
