Robert Blackwood marched through the VIP corridors, his polished leather shoes striking the linoleum like gunfire. Beside him walked Grace Walker, her hands tucked deep into the pockets of a worn trench coat, and twelve-year-old Lily, whose small hand held a scratched metal thermos as if it contained the secret to the universe.

Within an hour, Harrison had ordered a complete blackout: no phone calls, no outside visitors, and an immediate transfer of Ethan to a restricted isolation unit. But Robert was no longer listening to doctors. He used his authority as the chairman of the board to lock down the entire ninth floor, replacing hospital security with his own private armed guards.

In a closed conference room down the hall, Grace Walker spread a stack of yellowed, coffee-stained notebooks across the mahogany table.

"Four years ago, I was leading Project Lazarus at Blackwood Biotech," Grace said, her voice dropping. "We weren't searching for a treatment for PNDD. We found a cure."

Robert stared at the hand-drawn chemical structures in the notebook. "If we had a cure, why wasn't it brought to market? I spent three hundred million dollars searching for it!"

"Because you don't run Blackwood Biotech alone, Robert," Grace said bitterly. "Your board of directors, led by your chief legal officer, Julian Vance, realized a cure makes money once. A treatment—a continuous, month-by-month therapy that costs fifty thousand dollars per dose—makes money forever."

Robert felt a cold fist tighten in his gut. "Julian? Julian has been my friend for twenty years."

"Julian is the man who sealed my laboratory, erased my computer drives, and told me that if I ever spoke about Lily’s recovery, he would make sure she ended up in a state asylum," Grace revealed. "Lily didn't just survive PNDD. She was cured by an active compound derived from a rare strain of subterranean fungi found only in Eastern European salt mines. But when I synthesized it, Julian realized it was impossible to patent because it was a natural molecule."

"So he buried it," Robert said, his voice trembling with a terrifying rage.

"He didn't just bury it," Lily spoke up from the window sill, where she was carving a wooden stick with a small pocket knife. "He tried to destroy all the samples. Mom hid three vials in our tea shop freezer. That's what I gave Ethan."

Suddenly, the lights in the conference room flickered and died.

The emergency backup generators kicked on, bathing the hallway in an eerie red glow. From down the hall came the heavy sound of footsteps—booted, fast, and deliberate.

Robert’s head head-security officer, Marcus, burst through the door, his hand resting on his sidearm.

"Mr. Blackwood, we have a problem," Marcus said urgently. "A tactical team claiming to be federal agents just entered the lobby. They have a federal seizure order for all data and patients related to the PNDD clinical trial. They're heading for Ethan’s room right now."

"Julian," Robert growled.

"They aren't here to take Ethan to another hospital, Robert," Grace warned, her face turning pale. "They're here to erase the evidence. If Ethan shows signs of recovery without their patented drug, their entire stock value crashes by morning. They will terminate him."

Robert turned to Marcus. "Get my car to the basement loading dock. Right now."