Chapter 4 - The Ghost of Elena

Dust and smoke filled the room. Through the haze, Langley walked in, holding a silenced chrome pistol. Two heavily armed guards flanked him, laser sights scanning the room.

"Touching scene," Langley sneered, adjusting his silver glasses. "A father's redemption. A heroic nurse. Truly sickening."

"Langley," Dante growled, trying to stand, but his legs collapsed beneath him. He hit the floor hard. "It's over. The police—"

"The police are forty minutes away, Dante," Langley interrupted coolly. "And by the time they arrive, they will find that Nurse Bennett suffered a psychotic break, murdered you in a robbery attempt, killed poor little Ethan, and burned the house down to cover her tracks."

Maya shifted her weight, putting herself entirely in front of Ethan. "You won't get away with this, Langley. The files... I read them."

"Did you?" Langley smiled, a cold, empty expression. "Then you know how valuable Subject 04 is. But did you read the appendix, Miss Bennett? Did you read who designed the bio-synthetic delivery matrix inside the pillow?"

Maya’s heart stopped. "What?"

"You didn't apply for this job by accident, Maya," Langley said softly, taking a step forward. "We hunted you. We hired you. Do you know why? Because five years ago, your brilliant neuro-biologist sister, Elena Bennett, vanished from her laboratory at Johns Hopkins."

Maya’s breath caught in her throat. "Elena... she died in a car crash..."

"Is that what the news told you?" Langley chuckled, a chilling sound. "Elena didn't die. She came to work for me. She was the head of Project Daedalus. She designed the pillow matrix to deliver synthetic gene therapies without waking the patient. She created Ethan."

Maya’s mind reeled. The room seemed to spin. "You're lying..."

"Am I?" Langley tapped a control pad on his wrist. A projection screen lowered from the ceiling, displaying a live video feed from deep within the estate's subterranean bio-lab.

Inside a glass cryo-stasis tube filled with clear liquid lay a woman with long dark hair, breathing slowly through a ventilator mask.

May you like

The mahogany door to the nursery didn’t yield easily. For years, I had k...

The rain pelted the roof of the armored black Cadillac with the force of...

The sound of the towels hitting the hardwood floor echoed like a gunshot...

Maya gasped, her knees nearly giving out. "Elena..."

"She discovered a flaw in my commercial plan and tried to sabotage the project," Langley said, his eyes gleaming with mad ambition. "So I put her on ice. Her brain is hooked up to our central server, continually updating the genetic formulas for Ethan’s therapy. You want to save the boy, Maya? Or do you want to save your sister?"