Chapter 7 - THE ARCHITECT’S KEY
Upstairs in Room 408, Nathan sat upright in his bed, his strength slowly returning as the saline drip flushed the toxins from his system. Ellie was curled up asleep on the small armchair nearby, her small hand still clutching her stuffed rabbit.
Clara sat beside the bed, holding a thick leather notebook that Detective Miller had retrieved from Nathan’s crashed sedan the previous evening.
"Nate," Clara whispered, flipping through pages of blueprints and technical schematics. "What were you working on at the firm before the accident? You were working eighty-hour weeks for a month."
Nathan looked at the pages, his brows drawing together as fragments of his memory began to resurface through the haze.
"The St. Leopold Expansion Project," Nathan said, his voice raspy but gaining clarity. "The hospital board hired my firm to design the underground foundation for the new organ transplant wing."
"Did you find something down there?"
Nathan pressed his palm to his temple, fighting off a sharp spike of pain. "Three weeks ago... I went down into the sub-basement levels below the old boiler house to complete the structural survey. The original blueprints showed a blank concrete utility vault. But when I brought my thermal scanner to inspect the load-bearing walls..."
He stopped, his breath catching in his throat.
"What was it, Nate?" Clara urged gently.
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"It wasn't a utility vault, Clara," Nathan whispered, his eyes wide with sudden, terrifying realization. "It was a high-grade bio-containment facility. Fully powered, climate-controlled, and hidden behind a reinforced blast door. It isn't registered on any municipal city plans."
He looked at Clara, his hands trembling. "I logged the discrepancy into the firm's central portal on Tuesday afternoon. Two hours later, my steering broke on Route 9."
