Chapter 2 - Shadows in the KitchenThe heavy swing doors of the Meridian Room slammed shut behind me, cutting off the deafening buzz of shock from the dining room.
"Hannah! What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Mr. Henderson shrieked, skidding across the tiled kitchen floor in his polished dress shoes. "Do you have any idea who that was? That's Khalid Al-Masri! He could buy this entire hotel and turn it into a parking lot! You just walked away from a blank check!"
"Consider it my two weeks' notice, Mr. Henderson," I said, untying my black apron and tossing it onto the stainless steel prep table.
"You're fired! You're fired right now!" he sputtered, his face purple with rage.
"You can't fire someone who just quit," I replied calmly, pulling my denim jacket from my locker.
As I pushed through the back exit into the damp, neon-lit alleyway of downtown Chicago, the chill autumn air hit my face. But the cold outside was nothing compared to the chill running down my spine.
I knew Khalid Al-Masri. Not personally, but through my grandfather's frantic late-night warnings before he passed away three years ago. “If the seekers of the Sun find the last codex, Hannah, they won't preserve history—they'll weaponize it.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. My hands were shaking. I dialed a number I hadn't called in three years—an encrypted line linked to an old academic forum my grandfather used to moderate.
It rang twice before a raspy, tired voice answered.
"Speak."
"Professor Hayes?" I whispered, ducking behind a row of metal trash bins as a pair of black security SUVs idled at the mouth of the alley. "It's Hannah. Grandfather's granddaughter."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.
"Hannah? My God, child. Are you safe? Khalid’s network has been tearing through academic databases across Europe and the US for months. They know someone unlocked the Marib dialect."
"They don't just know, Professor. They found me. At my job. Tonight."
A heavy silence hung over the phone line, broken only by the static hiss of the encrypted connection.
"Listen to me very carefully," Hayes said, his voice dropping to an urgent murmur. "You can't go back to your apartment. They're already watching your building. Khalid isn't just a billionaire collector—he's the head of The Syndicate of the Red Crescent, a shadow group that has been hunting the ancient archives for decades. They believe the Codex contains instructions on how to manipulate global energy grids using ancient harmonic frequencies."
My eyes widened in the dark. "Harmonic frequencies? Grandfather said it was just a record of lost poetry and irrigation engineering!"
"Your grandfather lied to protect you, Hannah," Hayes said grimly. "And now you're holding the key to the whole thing. Meet me at Union Station. Platform 4. Train 109 leaves for Montreal in forty minutes. Do not use your credit cards. Do not take a cab. Run."
The line went dead.
At that exact moment, the harsh beam of a high-intensity flashlight sliced through the alleyway darkness.
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"There! By the dumpsters!" a deep voice shouted in Spanish.
Two men in charcoal-grey suits rounded the corner, their heavy boots splashing through puddles. Without thinking, I vaulted over a low brick wall into the loading dock of the neighboring warehouse, sprinting blindly into the labyrinth of the city.
