Chapter 5 - The Gas and the Iron
"Nolan!" I roared.
Nolan was already moving. He threw his entire two-hundred-pound weight against the oak door, but the reinforced frame held firm. The heavy iron deadbolt had been engaged from the hallway outside.
The gas was pouring out of the ceiling grate in a visible, sweet-smelling white mist. It descended rapidly toward the floor, cold and heavy.
"Halothane or Sevoflurane," Nolan barked, pulling his shirt up over his nose and mouth. "Surgical anesthetic! Don't breathe it in! Two minutes and we're all under!"
Evelyn dropped to her knees, wrapping her jacket completely around Sophie’s face and chest, pulling the child beneath her own body to protect her from the descending mist. "Victor! Help her!"
I rushed to the filing cabinets, pulling out a heavy metal drawer and dumping its contents onto the floor. "Nolan! Use the steel drawer against the hinge!"
Nolan grabbed the heavy metal drawer from my hands, wedging its sharp corner into the gap between the door and the wall right where the upper iron hinge was anchored. He braced his feet against the stone floor and pulled back with all his strength.
The wood groaned, splintering loudly, but the hinge didn't yield.
My lungs were beginning to burn. A wave of intense, dizzying fatigue washed over my brain. My knees buckled, and I grabbed the edge of the desk to keep from falling. Beside me, Evelyn let out a faint gasp, her eyes fluttering as the heavy anesthetic gas settled over us.
"Sophie..." Evelyn whimpered, her hands losing their grip on her jacket.
"Nolan..." I gasped, my vision tunneling into a narrow ring of darkness. "The wall... the wall is plaster..."
Nolan looked at the wall beside the door. It was covered in faded green paint, but behind the plaster was not solid granite—it was old, lathe-and-plaster interior framing.
He drew his tactical sidearm from his shoulder holster. He didn't shoot the lock. He fired four rapid shots directly into the wall two inches beside the doorframe, shattering the dry plaster and severing the wooden support studs.
The deafening reports of the gunshots echoed inside the small room.
Nolan threw his shoulder into the weakened section of the wall. The plaster gave way with a loud crash, creating an opening eighteen inches wide into the hallway.
He grabbed Evelyn by her jacket, dragging her through the jagged hole into the corridor. I grabbed Sophie, clutching her against my chest as I scrambled through the broken plaster, tumbling onto the corridor floor just as my consciousness began to fail.
The air in the hallway was cool and clean. I dragged sweet, damp air into my burning lungs, coughing violently as my vision began to clear.
In the far darkness of the green corridor, a silhouette was retreating rapidly toward the emergency stairs—a tall man in a dark trench coat carrying a silver metal briefcase.
Nolan raised his weapon, taking aim down the hallway. "Halt!"
The man didn't stop. He pushed through the heavy steel fire doors at the end of the hall, the doors slamming shut behind him.
Nolan made to chase after him, but I raised my hand. "No! Stay with us! He wants us to split up!"
Evelyn was sitting on the floor, holding her head, coughing violently as she pulled Sophie out from under her jacket. Sophie opened her eyes, looked up at Evelyn, and immediately reached her small hands up to grip Evelyn’s collar.
"Are you alright?" I asked, kneeling beside them, my hands shaking.
Evelyn looked at me through the tear-streaked dirt on her face. "He took Binder I, didn't he?"
I looked back into the gas-filled archive room through the hole in the wall. The desk was bare. The man in the trench coat had not come to kill us; he had used the gas to delay us while he retrieved the master ledger—Binder I.
"He took the ledger," I said, my voice hardening into pure iron. "But he forgot one thing."
I reached into my inner jacket pocket and pulled out the single sheet of paper I had folded and hidden before the gas began to pour—the amended contract carrying the secondary retrieval order.
And at the bottom of that page was a fresh signature, executed just three days ago:
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APPROVED FOR EXECUTION: Dr. Matthias Keller, Medical Director, Apex Bio-Tech, Geneva.
Keller wasn't dead. He wasn't hiding in offshore non-tax jurisdictions. He was operating out of a private research facility forty miles away in Geneva.
