Chapter 2 - THE SECRETS OF APEX BIOTECH
The restaurant erupted into gasps.
Ethan’s body trembled. He gripped the armrests of his wheelchair, his knuckles turning white. His legs, thin and underused, began to straighten. With a slow, agonizing effort, his knees locked.
He stood.
For three incredible, silent seconds, Ethan Sterling stood on his own two feet, looking his father in the eyes.
"Dad..." Ethan whispered, a tear spilling over his eyelashes. "I'm standing. I can feel—"
Before he could finish, his knees buckled. Robert lunged forward, catching his son before he hit the ground, cradling him back into the leather seat of the wheelchair. Ethan was panting, exhausted, but his face was lit with an expression Robert hadn't seen in half a decade: absolute hope.
Robert looked up to grab the girl, but the space beside the table was empty.
The silver plate lay on the floor, shattered. The steak was gone. The girl in the blue hoodie was nowhere to be seen.
"Seal the building!" Robert roared, his voice echoing off the glass walls. "Nobody leaves! Check the security cameras! Now!"
Within ten minutes, a team of Robert's private tactical security guards, led by his loyal chief of security, Marcus Vance, swarmed the fiftieth floor. Marcus was a former black-ops commander who had served Robert for twelve years. He looked pale as he approached Robert, who was holding Ethan's hand in a private dining alcove.
"Sir, we have a problem," Marcus muttered, leaning in close. "We reviewed the building's main security feed. The girl... she didn't enter through the lobby."
"Then she used the service elevator," Robert snapped.
"No, sir. She didn't use the stairs either. The cameras show she literally materialized in the 50th-floor hallway right outside the restaurant doors. And when she left... she walked into the service restroom. We broke the door down five seconds later. The room was empty. There are no windows, no vents big enough for a child. She vanished."
Robert felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck. "That’s impossible. She did something to Ethan's implant. Look at his telemetry."
Marcus handed Robert a tablet displaying the real-time data from Ethan's spinal chip. The graph, which had been flat for years, was now spiking with erratic, highly complex wave patterns.
"Our medical team in Zurich just called," Marcus whispered. "They're losing their minds. They said the chip isn't sending raw electrical pulses anymore. It’s receiving an encrypted code. Someone is broadcasting a signal directly to your son's spine. And Robert... the source of the broadcast isn't local."
"What do you mean it's not local? Where is it coming from?"
Marcus swallowed hard. "The signal is bouncing off a secure, decommissioned military satellite. A satellite owned by Apex Biotech."
Robert’s blood ran cold.
May you like
Apex Biotech.
The company he had ruthlessly acquired, stripped of its patents, and driven into bankruptcy six years ago—just one year before Ethan's "accident."
