Chapter 5 - The Evidence of the Past
Dr. Sterling, the ship’s chief medical officer, wore a crisp white lab coat over a black turtleneck, looking entirely out of place amidst the industrial pipes and freezing mist of Deck 2. He casually flicked an ash onto the steel grating floor as he tapped away on his tablet, reviewing digital medical certificates.
The same doctor who had signed Ashly’s fake psychiatric report without ever meeting her. The same man who had helped cover up the murder of Gregory’s first wife, Sarah, six months prior.
Ashly stepped out from the shadow of a ventilation duct, her footsteps echoing sharply against the metal flooring.
“Looking for a new diagnosis, Doctor?” she asked, her voice cutting through the hum of the refrigeration compressors.
Dr. Sterling spun around, dropping his tablet with a clatter. His eyes widened in genuine shock as he recognized the woman security was hunting all over the ship. But his panic quickly morphed into a cold, clinical sneer as he realized he was alone with her in the deepest, most isolated corner of the ship.
“Ah, Mrs. Hartman,” Dr. Sterling recovered smoothly, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses. “Security has been looking everywhere for you. It appears your paranoid delusions have escalated significantly. Fortunately, I have a sedative right here in my pocket that will help you ‘rest’ until we dock.”
He reached casually into his lab coat pocket, his fingers curling around the cold barrel of a suppressed tranquilizer pistol.
Before he could draw the weapon, Ashly closed the ten-foot gap between them with explosive, blinding speed. She didn't give him the courtesy of a dialogue. She delivered a lightning-fast front snap kick straight into his chest, driving the doctor backward into the heavy steel wall with a breathless groan.
The tranquilizer pistol flew from his grasp, sliding across the frost-covered floor.
Ashly pinned him against the bulkhead, her forearm pressed firmly across his throat, cutting off his air supply. “Where is she, Doctor? Where did you put Sarah?”
Dr. Sterling clawed desperately at her arm, his face turning a mottled shade of purple. “I... I don't know what—ggh—what you’re talking about...”
“Lie to me again, and I’ll break your collarbone,” Ashly whispered, her voice carrying the absolute, chilling authority of a Marine combat veteran who had stared down real terror. “The cold-storage unit. Open it.”
Gasping for air, the doctor nodded frantically, his eyes darting toward the heavy digital keypad beside the vault door.
Ashly yanked him forward, slammed his thumb against the biometric scanner, and punched the override code he babbled out in a panicked stutter.
With a heavy, pneumatic hiss, the thick insulated door of the industrial freezer swung open, spilling a dense cloud of white vapor out into the corridor.
The temperature inside dropped instantly below zero. Frost coated the metal shelving units stacked high with crates of imported beef and poultry. But near the back of the chamber, behind a row of unmarked wooden crates wrapped in industrial plastic, sat something far more sinister.
A secondary, locked medical transport container.
Ashly forced Dr. Sterling to walk inside at gunpoint—having picked up his dropped tranquilizer pistol—and ordered him to pry open the container’s latch with a heavy iron crowbar lying near the ice scraper.
With trembling hands, the doctor forced the lid upward.
Inside, preserved in the sub-zero chill, lay the tragic, preserved remains of a young woman with long blonde hair—Sarah, Gregory’s first wife. Clipped to her frozen clothing was a hospital ID badge and an autopsy report detailing blunt-force trauma to the skull, directly contradicting the official maritime disappearance record filed by the cruise line six months ago.
And right beneath Sarah’s hand was a signed medical certification document, bearing Dr. Sterling’s signature, officially declaring her cause of death as "accidental drowning at sea."
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Ashly pulled out her own cell phone, activating the camera and video recorder. She captured every angle—the body, the identification, the forged medical cover-up documents, and the trembling, confessed doctor standing right beside the evidence.
“Smile, Doctor,” Ashly said coldly as the flash illuminated the frozen vault. “Your medical career is officially over.”
