Chapter 4 - The Hidden ElevatorThe service entrance of St. Matthew's smelled of damp concrete, bleach, and old rust. Nathan pushed open the heavy steel door, stepping into a narrow, dimly lit hallway flanked by green-painted brick walls.
The hospital was eerily quiet. The upper floors were pitch black, but as Nathan walked deeper into the interior, a faint, rhythmic hum vibrated through the floorboards.
Humm... humm... humm...
It was coming from the elevator shaft at the end of the hall.
According to the building blueprints Nathan had memorized, the public elevators stopped at the ground floor. But as he reached the end of the corridor, he saw a secondary, industrial freight elevator—one that required a digital keycard reader mounted beside the steel doors.
Nathan reached into his pocket, pulled out the small black flash drive Emily had given him, and examined it closely. On the back of the plastic casing was a tiny barcode sticker.
He pressed the barcode against the digital reader.
BEEP.
A green light flashed. The heavy steel doors groaned, shuddered, and slowly slid open, revealing an elevator interior lined with brushed steel and security cameras.
Nathan stepped inside. There were only three buttons on the panel: G, B1, and B2.
He pressed B2.
The doors closed with a heavy metallic thud, and the car dropped downward with terrifying speed. Nathan felt his stomach lurch as the elevator descended deep beneath the city streets, far below the foundation of the old hospital.
When the car finally stopped, the doors slid open with a soft hiss, and Nathan stepped out into a nightmare.
The sub-basement was vast, brightly lit with sterile fluorescent panels, and completely modernized. Rows of high-tech medical equipment, containment pods, and digital monitoring stations stretched down a long, white-tiled corridor.
It didn't look like a hospital storage room.
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It looked like a black-site laboratory.
And standing at the end of the hall, waiting beside an open laboratory door, was Richard Vance.
