Chapter 4 - Blood and Blueprint
The heavy mahogany doors of my study blasted inward with a deafening crash as Prescott and two tactical guards shoved a struggling, pale-faced Dr. Franklin Yates into the room. Yates’s pristine white lab coat was half-buttoned, his wire-rimmed glasses sliding down the bridge of his sweaty nose.
"Lawson! What is the meaning of this outrage?" Yates sputtered, stumbling against the edge of my desk. "I was tending to Jonah and Blythe! Their electrolyte balance is already unstable—"
"Save the performance, Franklin," I said, stepping around the desk, the heavy black barrel of my SIG Sauer resting casually against my thigh. "You had seven years to look me in the eye, take my money, shake my hand, and play the concerned family physician while slowly executing my children from the inside."
Yates swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward Elena standing by the bookcase. A flicker of recognition—and pure, unadulterated venom—crossed his features. "You... you should have died in the river, you little parasite."
"So it's true," I whispered, the last remaining illusion of my normal life shattering into dust. I crossed the distance between us in two strides and drove the butt of my pistol hard into Yates’s shoulder, sending him sprawling backward onto the Persian rug. He cried out, clutching his arm.
"Mr. Mercer!" Prescott’s voice cut through the tension from the doorway. "We've got perimeter breach! Vanguard tactical teams are entering through the ground-floor utility tunnels. They've disabled the main power grid—we're on emergency backup generators!"
"How many?" I asked, never taking my eyes off the groaning doctor on the floor.
"At least a dozen heavy operators, boss. Fully armored. They're heading straight for the central atrium."
I looked down at Elena, then back at the open medical dossier on my desk. "Is there a cure in these papers, Elena? Or did you just come here to watch us die?"
Elena reached down, flipping past the diagnostic charts to a handwritten appendix sealed in a plastic sleeve—Genevieve’s handwriting. "The leukemia isn't a disease, Lawson. It's a dormant synthetic retrovirus. Yates and Vanguard engineered it to require a specific anti-toxin serum for maintenance—a serum they control exclusively out of their downtown facility. But Genevieve synthesized the universal counter-agent before she died. It's hidden in the genome sequence of the primary cell line."
"Where?"
"In the underground vault beneath your own armory," Elena said, her voice ringing clear. "Genevieve knew you'd build a fortress to protect your family, so she hid the master synthesis sample where no corporate board would ever look: inside the biometric lock of your private bunker."
I let out a harsh, humorless laugh. For two years, I had kept an underground armory stocked with weapons to fight a war against the outside world, never realizing the cure for my children's execution was sitting locked inside the very door I walked past every single day.
"Prescott," I barked, turning toward my chief of security. "Take two men, secure the hallway, and hold the elevator shaft. I'm going down to the vault. If anyone tries to pass you—corporate goons, cops, or angels—turn them into red mist."
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"Consider it done, boss," Prescott grinned grimly, pulling his MP5 submachine gun tight against his shoulder.
I hauled Yates up by the collar of his lab coat, shoving the barrel of my pistol squarely beneath his jaw. "You're coming with me, Franklin. If my kids don't survive tonight, you're going to lead the parade straight to hell."
