Chapter 16 - The Judas Thread
Aiden leapt upward with unnatural speed, catching the lip of the grate with his left hand.
With his right, he drove a combat blade straight through the metal mesh into the sentry's throat.
The man collapsed without making a single sound.
Marcus and the second operative hoisted themselves through the opening, securing the second hostile before he could draw breath.
Within four seconds, the hallway was ours.
We crept along the sterile linoleum floor, ducking beneath the shattered fluorescent lights.
The stench of copper and fear hung thick in the pediatric ward.
Inside room 304, I caught sight of Mrs. Gable, the head night nurse, clutching two trembling six-year-olds to her chest.
I placed a single finger against my lips, catching her terrified gaze.
She nodded frantically, tears streaming down her bruised face, and pulled the children deeper under the bedsheets.
Aiden signaled his men to split into pairs to disable the oxygen line detonators.
Suddenly, a harsh, metallic voice crackled through the hospital's public address speakers.
"Aiden, my dearest nephew."
"Did you truly believe you could walk into my perimeter without an invitation?"
A heavy steel fire door slammed shut behind us with an earth-shattering crash, sealing us off from Marcus and the squad.
Aiden spun around, weapon raised, but the reinforced titanium barrier was already locked down.
"Aiden!" Marcus’s voice shouted through the heavy glass viewport. "The main system was overridden from the outside!"
"Somebody on our private comm network gave them our frequency!"
My breath hitched in my chest.
A mole.
There was a traitor within Aiden's innermost circle who had fed Vittorio our exact breaching coordinates.
"Walk to the main operating theater, nephew," Vittorio's voice hissed through the overhead speaker.
"Bring the girl."
"If I see a single other weapon raised, my man at the valve will flood the pediatric air ducts with Sarin gas."
"You have sixty seconds."
Aiden looked at the titanium blast door, his jaw grinding so hard I feared his teeth would shatter.
Then he looked at me.
"Aiden," I whispered, reaching out to steady his trembling hand.
"We have to go."
"He will kill you, Clara," Aiden choked out, a raw terror in his eyes that no army had ever brought forth.
"He will not," I said with fierce conviction.
"Because my father gave me something Vittorio doesn't know I have."
Aiden’s brow furrowed in confusion.
"What?"
I reached into my boot, pulling out a faded silver thumb drive disguised as a medical diagnostic key.
"My father’s last words to me were: 'If the darkness ever finds you, Clara, tell them the cipher is in the blood.'"
"I never understood what he meant until today."
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"The ledger isn't a computer file, Aiden."
"It's an antidote."
