CHAPTER 8 – Daniel's Final Confession
Daniel sat alone inside a maximum-security interrogation room.
His hands were chained to the steel table.
For three days...
He had refused to speak.
Until one request changed everything.
"I'll talk."
"But only to Emma."
Against everyone's advice, Emma entered the room.
Daniel looked older.
Broken.
Defeated.
For the first time since their arrest...
He cried.
"I'm sorry."
Emma stared coldly.
"Was any of it real?"
Daniel closed his eyes.
"The assignment wasn't."
"My love was."
Emma wanted to hate him.
Instead...
She wanted answers.
Daniel slowly slid a tiny metal key across the table.
"I hid this before they arrested me."
"What does it open?"
"A vault beneath the old Saint Gabriel Children's Hospital."
Emma's heart skipped a beat.
The same hospital where she had supposedly died as a baby.
Daniel looked directly into her eyes.
"They lied to both of us."
"I was told you were carrying something inside your DNA."
"But I never learned the truth."
Before Emma could ask another question...
Every light inside the prison suddenly went out.
Emergency alarms screamed.
Gunfire erupted somewhere down the hallway.
The backup generators failed.
The interrogation room door burst open.
Not FBI agents.
Not prison guards.
The man in black stepped inside.
He smiled at Daniel.
"You've talked too much."
A suppressed gunshot echoed through the darkness.
Daniel shoved Emma beneath the table.
The bullet struck his chest instead.
Blood spread across his prison uniform.
As Emma held him in her arms, Daniel used his last breath to whisper five chilling words.
"Your mother... is their leader..."
His hand fell lifelessly to the floor.
The man in black disappeared into the darkness before the lights returned.
Emma looked down at the blood-covered key in her hand.
Engraved on its surface were four simple words:
"OPEN ONLY WITH HER."
Emma had spent her whole life searching for her mother.
Now she faced a horrifying possibility.
May you like
She wasn't trying to rescue her mother anymore.
She was about to confront the woman who had built Project ORACLE from the shadows all along.
