Chapter 4 - The Race Against the Clock
Alio didn't wait for Tommy to redial. He spun on his heel and sprinted back up the metal stairs, his boots clanging wildly against the rungs.
"Boss! Wait!" Tommy yelled, scrambling to keep up.
They tore through the abandoned slaughterhouse doors, plunged back into the blinding snowstorm, and threw themselves into the Mercedes. Alio shoved the key into the ignition, slammed his foot onto the gas pedal, and the car fishtailed violently across the frozen mud before rocketing toward the highway.
The drive from the Stockyards back to downtown Chicago normally took twenty-five minutes. Alio carved it down to twelve, running three red lights, sideswiping a parked delivery truck on Wabash Avenue, and screaming past bewildered patrol cars that didn't dare pull over a black Mercedes with tinted plates.
When they screeched to a halt outside Solace, Alio threw the car door open before it had fully stopped and bolted down the basement stairs.
The basement door was wide open.
"Miller!" Alio shouted, drawing his pistol as he hit the bottom landing.
No answer. Only the sterile, harsh hum of the fluorescent lights and the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of an emergency heart monitor echoing from the operating room.
Alio kicked the glass door open.
Dr. Miller was slumped against the far wall, unconscious, a massive purple bruise blooming across his left temple. On the operating table, Goliath lay completely rigid. His eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling, his massive chest frozen mid-expansion. A thin wire led from a glowing red box on the side table straight into a freshly bandaged incision on the dog's shoulder.
And standing beside the table, casually wiping blood off his leather gloves with a linen handkerchief, was a tall, silver-haired man in an impeccably tailored navy suit.
Marcus Vane.
Two armed guards in tactical gear stood behind Vane, their assault rifles leveled squarely at Alio’s chest as he entered the room.
"Mr. Valente," Vane said, his voice smooth as aged whiskey, carrying the easy arrogance of a man who owned the mayor, the judges, and the morgue. "I must say, you have quite an adventurous hobby. Breaking into my old research facilities at midnight. Digging through trash. And now... harboring stolen property."
Alio didn't raise his gun. He kept it at his side, his fingers locked around the grip so tightly his knuckles turned bone-white. His eyes didn't look at the guards. They locked onto Vane with an intensity that made the older man’s smile twitch just a fraction.
"Step away from the table, Marcus," Alio said. His voice was no longer loud. It was a low, lethal hum.
Vane chuckled, slipping the handkerchief back into his breast pocket. "Now, why would I do that? This animal represents four million dollars in research and development for the Department of Defense. More importantly, he represents a liability. If the public found out what we were engineering down in the Stockyards—enhanced neural-link obedience in mammalian subjects—the stock crash alone would ruin me."
"He's a dog," Alio said, taking one slow step forward.
"He's a prototype," Vane corrected sharply. "And right now, his bio-relay is transmitting his exact GPS coordinates and medical telemetry back to my central server. In three minutes, a clean-up team will arrive here. They won't just take the dog back, Alio. They'll sanitize this entire building. Every witness. Every bartender. Every cook. Starting with your good friend Dr. Miller here, and ending with you."
Tommy Keen burst through the doorway behind Alio, weapon drawn, but froze when he saw the two assault rifles trained on his boss. "Boss, the street outside... three black SUVs just blocked the alley. Men in tactical gear are getting out."
Alio looked at Goliath on the table. The dog's dark eyes were dulling. The emergency monitor was beginning to show a dangerous drop in blood pressure. The remote kill-switch Vane had activated was slowly shutting down the animal's nervous system from the inside out.
"You like playing God, Marcus?" Alio asked softly.
Vane raised an eyebrow. "I like protecting my investments."
"Good," Alio said.
In a movement so fast it defied human reaction, Alio didn't aim his gun at Vane. He pivoted his wrist, fired a single shot directly into the overhead water sprinkler pipe, and simultaneously lunged to the side.
CRASH!
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High-pressure water instantly flooded the room in a torrential downpour, shorting out the fluorescent lights and plunging the basement into pitch-black darkness, illuminated only by the flashing red emergency strobes.
Shouts echoed from Vane’s guards as gunfire erupted blindly into the spray.
