Chapter 4 - The Infiltration of Sector 7
The rain began to fall as we emerged from a rusted maintenance hatch inside an abandoned train car at the edge of the old river rail yard. The sky was a bruised, heavy purple, illumination provided only by distant yellow streetlights and the flickering neon of industrial shipping yards.
Lily was exhausted, her small legs unable to keep up the pace. Callahan carried her on his back, wrapped in his tactical jacket, while Rivera and I scouted the perimeter.
Standing half a mile down the riverbank was a massive, windowless concrete facility surrounded by high security fencing and guarded by automated camera towers. It looked like a derelict municipal water treatment plant, but to my newly awakened memory, it was Sector 7—Aegis Dynamics' black-budget holding facility.
"There's heavy security," Rivera warned, watching through a pair of compact binoculars. "At least eight armed guards on the perimeter. Motion sensors on the fence. We don't have the firepower to assault that place, Callahan."
"We're not assaulting it," I said, crouching beside a rusted steel pillar. "We're using the service bypass. When I designed the facility's air filtration architecture, I built an emergency pressure relief valve behind the main cooling towers. It bypasses the primary security grid entirely."
Callahan looked at me, his eyes filled with a mixture of respect and concern. "Clara... if we go in there, there's no backup coming. The precinct is compromised. I tried calling my captain an hour ago, and the line was redirected to a blind server. Vance owns people at the top."
"I don't care about the police, Callahan," I said firmly, looking back at Lily, who was fast asleep against Callahan's shoulder, her rabbit backpack tucked securely under her arm. "Vance turned me into a ghost and tried to turn my daughter into a laboratory asset. I am going to tear his empire down to the foundation."
We moved silently under the cover of the heavy rain, using the shadows of parked shipping containers to mask our approach. We reached the base of the massive industrial cooling towers. Just as my memory had promised, hidden behind a thick clump of overgrown wild ivy, was a heavy circular steel hatch marked with an industrial pressure hazard symbol.
I knelt beside the hatch. There was a digital keypad beside it, dark and unlit.
"It's powered down," Rivera muttered, touching the cold display.
"It's not powered down. It's on a low-frequency proximity sleep state," I said. I reached out and pressed my palm firmly against the glass display screen.
For three agonizing seconds, nothing happened.
Then, a soft, green luminescent glow flared to life beneath my hand. A mechanical chime sounded, followed by a smooth, synthetic voice that sent a shiver straight down my spine:
"Biometric scan recognized. Welcome back, Chief Architect Clara Mercer. Clearance Level Alpha."
The heavy steel bolts inside the hatch retracted with a deep, hydraulic HISS.
Callahan let out a low whistle. "Well. That certainly beats a battering ram."
We slipped through the narrow circular opening one by one, entering a brightly lit, sterile white corridor that contrasted sharply with the rusted rain-soaked world outside. The air inside was cold, dry, and smelled heavily of antiseptic and recycled oxygen.
We were deep inside the belly of the beast.
As we walked down the silent hallway, the walls lined with reinforced glass observation panels, we passed several empty holding rooms. But as we reached the end of the third corridor, a soft, rhythmic beep echoed from a room marked CELL 04.
I stepped toward the reinforced glass window and looked inside.
Sitting on a narrow metal cot inside the cell was a woman in her late forties, wearing a faded gray jumpsuit. She had pale skin, tired eyes, and striking, brilliant blue eyes. Her hands were cuffed to a steel ring built into the wall.
Lily suddenly woke up on Callahan's back. Her eyes widened, and she gasped softly.
"Nurse Sarah!" Lily cried out.
May you like
The woman in the cell snapped her head up, her eyes locking onto us through the glass. When she saw me standing beside Lily, tears instantly flooded her eyes, and she collapsed to her knees against the glass frame.
"Clara..." Sarah wept through the intercom grille. "You found her. Thank God... you found her."
