Chapter 4 - The Surgeon Behind the Glass
Daniel folded Anna's note before anyone else could read it.
Dr. Kline was standing twenty feet away behind the ICU glass, speaking to a resident. His posture was calm, his expression professional. He had saved Lily's life twice in one night.
Daniel's instincts divided him. One side saw the surgeon who had pressed gloved hands into his daughter's chest until her heart returned. The other saw a possible enemy standing within reach of her breathing tube.
Voss noticed the change in his face. "What does the note say?"
Daniel handed it to her.
She read it once, then looked through the glass at Kline. "Do not react."
"He is alone with her every hour."
"And if Anna wrote this under coercion, pulling him now could be exactly what they want."
Daniel hated that she was right.
The memory card from the music box contained one encrypted audio file. Hospital technicians could not open it, but Daniel recognized the encryption label. It used an obsolete military field cipher called RAVEN-SIX, designed for short emergency transmissions. Only four people in his unit had possessed the rotating key: Daniel, Captain Rourke, communications specialist Mateo Ruiz, and intelligence liaison Evelyn Shaw.
Ruiz had died at Raven.
Shaw had disappeared from government service two months after the attack.
Rourke had no grave.
Daniel entered an old key sequence from memory. The audio unlocked.
Anna's voice filled the consultation room.
"Daniel, I do not know when you will hear this. Halcyon is not building weapons. It is building obedience. The implant in Lily is not a tracker. It is half of an authorization system. I placed it there to keep the other half from being used. I thought no one would look inside a child. I was wrong."
Daniel closed his eyes.
Anna continued. "The key opens an archive called Sanctuary. It contains names, experiments, payments, and command recordings. If Halcyon accesses it first, they will erase everything. If the government accesses it first, the wrong people may bury it. Trust no one who survived Raven without scars."
The recording crackled.
"Kline is connected to Meridian. But connection is not proof. Watch his left hand."
The file ended.
Voss frowned. "Watch his left hand?"
Daniel remembered the operating room footage from the ICU camera. Kline wore gloves, but when he removed them, his left hand shook slightly.
At Raven, exposure to an experimental nerve agent had caused tremors among several prisoners Daniel's team rescued. Halcyon's medical staff called it a calibration compound.
Kline might not be an operative. He might be a former subject.
Voss arranged a quiet transfer of Lily's case to another surgeon while pretending that Kline remained in charge. Before the transfer could occur, Kline entered the consultation room and locked the door behind him.
He placed both hands on the table. His left hand trembled.
"Anna warned you about me," he said.
Daniel rose.
Kline did not retreat. "She should have warned you sooner."
"Where is she?"
"I do not know."
Daniel grabbed the front of Kline's gown and drove him against the wall. "Wrong answer."
"I treated her thirteen years ago," Kline said through clenched teeth. "Meridian brought her into a private clinic after she tried to expose Sanctuary. She was injured. Frightened. She asked me to help hide the authorization shard inside Lily during a minor cardiac procedure."
"You implanted it in my daughter."
"Anna did. I assisted."
Daniel tightened his grip.
Kline's eyes did not leave his. "She believed Halcyon would kill thousands to recover it. She believed you were already compromised."
That loosened Daniel's hand.
"Compromised how?"
Kline glanced toward the ceiling camera. "Not here. There is a maintenance tunnel beneath the original hospital wing. At two in the morning, take the west elevator to the basement. Come alone if you want the truth about Raven."
"Why should I trust you?"
"You should not."
Kline opened the door.
Before leaving, he turned his left palm upward. A pale number had been branded near the wrist.
R-17.
The same number Daniel had seen tattooed on the teenagers rescued from the convoy.
At 1:58 a.m., Daniel entered the west elevator.
May you like
At 2:03, Detective Voss found Kline's body in the surgical stairwell.
His left hand had been cut off.
