Chapter 5 - The Brother Who Knew Too Much
Lena stopped Daniel before he reached the chair.
The device beneath Evan was not an explosive.
It was connected to a tablet secured beneath the seat. The tablet displayed hundreds of files transferring to an unknown location.
Nathan Price had been forced to reveal the password that opened the maintenance room. When Lena entered it, the Larva Key began copying data from a storage unit hidden inside the wall.
Marcus had placed Evan above it to ensure no one removed the device carelessly.
A technician disconnected the unit while Lena freed Evan.
“What did they do to you?” Daniel asked.
Evan rubbed his wrists.
“Mostly asked questions.”
“About the metal card?”
“About Amber.”
Amber stood several feet away.
“What did they ask?”
“How long you’ve been keeping records. Whether you told Daniel about Zurich. Whether you knew what happened to Isaac Bell.”
The name changed her expression.
Daniel noticed.
“Who is Isaac Bell?”
Amber looked at Lena.
“He worked at Vale Meridian.”
“In what department?”
“Advanced security.”
“Was he the whistleblower in Black Harbor?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel stepped closer.
“You recognize the name.”
“Isaac contacted me shortly before I found the shell-company payments. He said Marcus was using company technology for private operations.”
“What kind of operations?”
“He never explained. We arranged to meet.”
“Did you?”
“No. He disappeared that morning.”
Daniel remembered the missing whistleblower. The man had contacted his department under an alias, but there had been no confirmed identity.
“Isaac Bell was our source,” Daniel said.
Lena looked at him.
“Are you certain?”
“He mentioned an internal project called Chrysalis. That name appeared in the anonymous email.”
Amber’s eyes widened.
“Chrysalis was Marcus’s private research division.”
“Was?”
“It was officially closed after a laboratory fire three years ago.”
“What did they build?”
“The Larva Keys were one project. There were others involving remote access, behavioral prediction, and data reconstruction.”
Evan leaned against the wall.
“The men who took me said Isaac stole something before the fire.”
“The encryption card?” Lena asked.
“No. Something called the Queen.”
Daniel glanced at the yellow device still attached beneath the chair.
The naming pattern was becoming clear.
Larva. Chrysalis. Queen.
“What does the Queen control?” he asked.
Amber’s face was tense.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Evan looked at her.
“They thought you had.”
“Why?”
“They said Isaac trusted you.”
Amber shook her head.
“I barely knew him.”
“They showed me a picture of you meeting him.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
Amber fell silent.
Daniel waited for her to deny it.
She did not.
“You told us you never met him,” he said.
“I didn’t meet him after he contacted me six months ago.”
“That isn’t what Evan said.”
“I knew Isaac before the fire.”
“How well?”
“He recruited me to Vale Meridian.”
Daniel felt another layer of their marriage shifting beneath him.
“You never mentioned him.”
“I hadn’t seen him in years.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Amber looked toward the open side of the garage, where rain moved like a curtain through the darkness.
“When I joined Vale Meridian, Isaac supervised financial access for experimental projects. He believed the company could change the world. So did I.”
“Were you involved with him?”
“No.”
“You keep answering only the smallest part of every question.”
“Because the complete answers keep getting people taken.”
Daniel looked at Evan.
“Secrets didn’t protect him.”
Amber closed her eyes.
Lena instructed the officers to take Nathan into custody and transport Evan to a hospital for examination. She then pulled Daniel and Amber aside.
“The stolen Larva Key is still moving. My vehicle was abandoned five miles west, but the device was removed.”
“Can it be tracked?” Daniel asked.
“Not directly. We’re reviewing traffic cameras.”
“The countdown card expires in four minutes,” Amber said.
Lena looked at it.
“What happens when it reaches zero?”
“I don’t know.”
The final digits vanished.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then the surface turned black.
New characters appeared.
They were not numbers.
They formed an address.
214 West Briar Street.
Daniel recognized it.
“That was the original Vale Meridian headquarters.”
Amber shook her head.
“The building burned during the Chrysalis fire.”
“Is it still standing?”
“Part of it.”
Lena contacted her office and requested property records.
The address belonged to a holding company connected to one of the shell corporations Amber had discovered.
The building had not been abandoned. It had been quietly renovated eighteen months earlier.
As Lena spoke, Amber stared at the address.
“Marcus wanted us to wait for the code to expire.”
“Why?” Daniel asked.
“Because the address was hidden until then. The card wasn’t only a key. It was an invitation.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Evan was being led toward an ambulance when he called Daniel’s name.
Daniel approached him.
“There’s something else,” Evan said.
“What?”
“The man in the car asked me about Noah.”
Daniel’s body stiffened.
“What did he say?”
“He wanted to know whether Noah talked in his sleep.”
Amber hurried closer.
“Why?”
Evan shook his head.
“He said children remember patterns adults ignore. He said Noah had seen the Queen.”
Daniel thought of the birthday party.
Noah had recognized Marcus immediately. He had seen the Larva Keys. He had known where one remained hidden.
“What exactly did Noah see?” Daniel asked Amber.
“I don’t know.”
“You were there.”
“I saw him in the hallway only after Marcus had removed the device.”
“Did Marcus have anything else?”
Amber tried to remember.
“A black case.”
“The box Noah mentioned.”
“Yes.”
“What was inside it?”
“I never saw.”
Evan gripped Daniel’s sleeve.
“The man said there were six caterpillars in your house.”
Daniel counted mentally.
Marcus had stolen the first from the vent.
Daniel and Lena had recovered the second.
Two transmitters were found beneath the floorboards, but those were not Larva Keys. The thermostat and smoke-detector devices were also different.
That meant four Larva Keys remained unaccounted for.
Evan continued.
“He said one of them was never meant for your laptop.”
Daniel looked at Amber.
“What was it meant for?”
May you like
Evan swallowed.
“Noah’s bedroom.”
