Chapter 17 - The Archive RoomDad pushed the heavy steel door open, the hinges groaning in protest as a wave of stale, chemical-smelling air rushed out into the corridor. Our flashlights swept across a small, windowless room lined with heavy-duty filing racks and a single metal desk in the center.
Sitting on the desk was an open cardboard box marked JULIAN VANCE - CASE #409.
Someone had already gone through the files and pulled out the primary master dossier.
“Dad, look at the floor,” I whispered, grabbing his sleeve and shining my light toward the corner of the room.
A fresh cigarette butt—still smoking slightly, emitting a faint whiff of menthol—smelled faintly against the damp concrete. Someone had left the facility not five minutes before we arrived.
Dad didn't hesitate. He dropped the flashlight into his left hand, grabbed a heavy iron pipe lying near the doorway, and stepped past the desk toward a narrow service stairwell leading deeper down into the subterranean levels of the institute.
“Stay behind me, Leo,” Dad commanded, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register that I hadn't heard since the night Julian left our kitchen.
We descended the concrete stairs into absolute darkness. The air grew colder, smelling heavily of rusted iron and stagnant water. At the bottom of the stairs, a single fluorescent tube flickered overhead, casting a sickly greenish glow over a narrow hallway lined with reinforced observation cells—the kind of holding rooms you’d expect to find in a maximum-security psychiatric prison, not a state research facility.
And standing at the end of the hall, looking calmly through the thick wire-reinforced glass of Cell 409, was a man in a dark trench coat holding a leather briefcase identical to the one Mr. Miller had carried.
May you like
The man turned around slowly as our footsteps echoed down the corridor. He wasn't old enough to have been the original director from 2008, but the sharp, colorless eyes and thin, humorless smile were unmistakably familiar.
“You’re late,” the man said smoothly, adjusting his cuffs. “Julian told me you were thorough, but I didn't expect you to track his old home address all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.”
