CHAPTER 5 — THE MAN WHO KILLED THE PRISON KING
Marcus Kane's body hit the cold concrete with a sickening thud.
The prison boss who had ruled Blackridge through fear was dead...
...killed by the very man he had served for years.
Every guard lowered their weapons.
No one dared move.
Director Samuel Pierce calmly slipped the silencer off his pistol as if he had merely finished a routine task.
"You all made one mistake," he said quietly.
"You believed Marcus was in charge."
He stepped over Marcus's lifeless body and smiled at Ava.
"But Blackridge has never been a prison."
"It has always been a factory."
Ava tightened her grip on the classified files.
"A factory for what?"
Pierce gestured toward another blast door hidden behind the laboratory.
The steel door slowly opened.
Beyond it stretched a massive underground complex illuminated by rows of white lights.
Doctors in surgical gowns rushed between operating rooms.
Scientists hurried to erase computer servers.
Armed mercenaries escorted terrified prisoners through metal corridors.
There weren't dozens of victims.
There were hundreds.
Some had disappeared from prisons across the country years earlier.
Others had been officially declared dead.
Yet every one of them was still alive.
Used as test subjects...
Then sold under new identities to powerful buyers around the world.
Ava's stomach turned.
"This is impossible..."
Pierce chuckled.
"No."
"It's profitable."
He pressed a button on a remote control.
Large monitors flickered to life.
One screen displayed Ava's personnel file.
Another showed her undercover mission.
Then a third screen revealed something that made her blood run cold.
A woman sat alone inside a glass cell.
Older.
Weaker.
But unmistakable.
Her mother.
The woman Ava had mourned for twenty years.
Pierce smiled as tears filled Ava's eyes.
"You were told Eleanor Carter died."
"I simply allowed the world to believe it."
Ava's voice cracked.
"She's alive..."
"For now," Pierce replied.
"But whether she survives tonight depends entirely on you."
He tossed a small keycard onto the floor.
"One door leads to your mother."
"The other leads to the evidence that can destroy everyone behind this operation."
"You only have time to save one."
The entire bunker fell silent.
Ava stared at the two flashing corridors.
Save her mother...
Or expose the conspiracy that could bring down the most powerful people in the country.
Then, before she could decide...
The loyal attack dogs suddenly began barking wildly at the ceiling.
A deafening explosion ripped through Blackridge Prison.
Dust rained from above.
Emergency lights turned blood red.
A voice thundered over the loudspeakers:
May you like
"Self-destruct sequence activated. Ten minutes until total facility collapse."
Ava realized the nightmare had only just begun.
