Chapter 4 - THE DEEP CODE
That night, inside a secure, air-gapped server room in the basement of the estate, Charles and his senior technical team inserted the micro-drive into an isolated workstation.
The drive was protected by an intricate 256-bit biometrics encryption key.
When the system prompted for an access code, Charles stared at the monitor for a long moment. He remembered what Maya had said in the sunroom: He said he was building a lock so nobody's body could break.
Charles brought up Richard Vance’s former employment records from Wagner Biotech. He recalled the specific project Richard had been obsessed with before his sudden resignation five years ago—an experimental gene-editing protocol designed to target rare, aggressive forms of cellular degradation, including the exact type of rapid-onset cancer that had taken Rebecca’s life.
Charles typed in the chemical formula name of the compound he and Richard had researched together seven years ago: REBECCA-7.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The monitor flashed green, unfolding thousands of lines of complex genomic sequencing data, clinical trial logs, and encrypted video files.
Charles clicked on the most recent video file, dated three days before Richard Vance’s fatal car accident.
The face of Richard Vance appeared on the screen. He looked gaunt, exhausted, with dark circles beneath his hollow eyes, sitting in a messy laboratory surrounded by centrifuges and monitors.
"If anyone is watching this," Richard’s recorded voice spoke from the speakers, trembling with emotion, "it means my brother Arthur has betrayed me, or Aegis Biopharma has found my location."
Richard swallowed hard, looking directly into the camera lens.
"When my daughters were born, they were diagnosed with a terminal genetic disorder—a total collapse of the cellular repair mechanism that would have taken their lives before their sixth birthday. In desperation, I utilized the restricted viral vector sequencing I developed at Wagner Biotech."
Charles leaned closer to the monitor, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the desk.
"The therapy worked," Richard continued, tears glinting in his eyes. "It arrested the cellular decay entirely. But Aegis Biopharma discovered my results. They don't want to use the treatment to cure children. They want to weaponize the synthetic delivery vector for military application and commercial monopoly. I encoded the entire master sequence into four separate, harmless DNA marker strands, distributed across my daughters' synthetic cellular profiles."
Richard leaned forward, his face filling the frame.
"The quadruplets are not just identical sisters. Together, their living DNA contains the only complete, functional blueprint for the cure. Separated, the sequence is useless. Aegis will attempt to isolate them, harvest their marrow, and discard them. To whoever finds this: protect my girls. Keep them together. They are the light of my life."
The video cut to static.
The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
Harrison looked at Charles, his face horror-struck. "My God, Charles... Arthur Vance wasn't just selling custody. He was delivering them to Aegis for human harvesting."
"Call the private security team," Charles commanded, his voice dropping into an icy, terrifying calm. "I want full perimeter lockdown on this estate. Armed guards at every gate. Double the guard shifts on the main floor."
"What about the court hearing tomorrow?" Harrison asked.
May you like
Charles looked toward the door leading upstairs, where four five-year-old girls were sleeping safely in their pillow fort.
"Tomorrow," Charles said softly, "we end this."
