Chapter 7 - Face to Face
Olivia was nearly unconscious on the metal bench, her breathing ragged and shallow. I knelt beside her, unsealing the silver vial from Vance’s kit. Using a fresh sterile dropper from the precinct first-aid kit, I carefully drew the clear fluid from the vial and administered three drops beneath her tongue, just as the technical instructions on the container indicated.
For two tense minutes, nothing seemed to change. The heavy silence of the locked precinct weighed down on us like lead. Rain continued to slam into the exterior roof overhead.
Then, Olivia let out a long, ragged gasp. The pale, blueish hue in her lips began to recede, replaced by a flush of natural color as her rapid heart rate began to slow into a steady, rhythmic pattern. Her eyes opened slowly, focusing on her sister.
“Emma?” she whispered softly.
Emma threw her arms around her sister, weeping softly against her hoodie.
Suddenly, a loud explosion rocked the administrative corridor. A cloud of acrid smoke poured through the vents as Marcus Vance blew the door hinges off the briefing room using a micro-demolition charge.
He stepped into the holding corridor, his respirator hanging loose around his neck. His face was pale, his eyes wide with desperate urgency.
“It’s done,” I said, standing up between him and the girls, my firearm leveled directly at his core. “She’s stable. The compound is neutralized.”
Vance stopped in his tracks. He looked past me toward his daughters, his chest heaving. The cold, calculating demeanor he had maintained throughout the lockdown broke, revealing a man utterly consumed by paranoia and ruin.
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“You don't understand what they were going to do to us,” Vance stammered, his hands shaking. “The corporation... they were going to seize everything. I had to protect the sequence...”
“You used your children as safe-deposit boxes, Marcus,” I said coldly. “You put them in lethal danger to protect your work.”
