Seven minutes was closer than he had thought. Time was running out. He checked his watch. It was eleven forty-seven and fifty-three seconds. He was almost at the hospital. The entrance was fifty yards away. Alphonsus didn't run. Running would draw attention, and attention was the last thing he needed. He walked through the automatic doors into the fluorescent brightness of the emergency entrance. The surgical floor felt wrong. He knew it the moment the elevator doors opened. The nurses' station was too quiet. A security guard stood near the elevators instead of downstairs. Two orderlies stood in a doorway, talking. Their conversation stopped the moment they saw him. The air felt tight, compressed, as though everyone were holding their breath. He scanned the corridor again, searching for any sign that the warning had been staged, but every face remained unreadable. Alphonsus moved toward the surgical waiting area. A receptionist looked up before he could speak. “Can I help you?

Alphonsus lowered the phone and looked at the terrified man beneath him. The stairwell was silent except for their breathing. The concrete felt cold beneath the man's back. His eyes darted between Alphonsus and the phone, measuring the chances of escape and wondering whether surrender was his only option. “How many people are involved in this? Don't lie to me,” Alphonsus said. His voice had changed. It was no longer angry; it was colder. “How many people did Victor place inside this hospital?” The man's breath came in short gasps. “I don't know exactly. Maybe five. Maybe more.” His words tumbled out. “He said there were people in security, administration, and the medical records department. I only know the ones he introduced me to.” “Who's leading the sabotage? I'm sure Victor isn't the one at the top. Who was on that call?” “I don't know.” The man's voice cracked. “That's the truth. I swear. Victor received calls. He would go quiet and listen. Then he would give me instructions.

Alphonsus couldn't stop staring at his phone screen, then back at Cindy’s closed door. He locked the phone. The display went dark. He unlocked it again. "Alphonsus?" Cindy called from inside the guest room. He slipped the phone into his coat pocket, stepped over to the door, and turned the handle. Cindy sat on the edge of the narrow mattress, one boot pulled off, holding a strip of worn leather lace. She looked up, her forehead creasing. "Is Mom awake?" "No," Alphonsus said. "Put your boot back on." "Why?" "Someone just logged into the university system," he said, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. "They queried your student profile and pulled the plate on your car." Cindy stopped. The lace trailed over her knee. "My car is still in the campus lot." "And your parking permit is registered to the house on Ashford." "God," she whispered. Her fingers tightened around the boot tongue. "If they run the permit, they have the home address." "Someone is checki

The second text message hovered beneath the first, bright against the dark wood of the kitchen table. Cindy's hand tightened on the back of a wooden chair. Her eyes shifted from the screen to the open ledger. "Alphonsus? Is that from the same number?" "Blocked," Alphonsus said. He flipped the phone face down. The glass clacked against the varnish. Cindy leaned down, her finger hovering a quarter-inch above the faded ink. "If Dad wasn't listed as the primary owner, that record isn't just a log," she said. "Look at the ink density right here." Alphonsus pulled the oil lamp two inches closer. "The line for secondary custody is darker," she said. Her voice dropped. "The entry beneath the red warning was written with a different pen. Years later." Alphonsus pressed his right hand against the leather binding. A sharp, needle-like pulse prickled against the inside of his knuckle. The air in the room grew heavy, cold, smelling faintly of river salt and engine oil. The ring on his fin

The smoke from Harbor Unit 14 had barely cleared from the horizon by the time the rented sedan cut its lights and rolled into the overgrown driveway of the Ashford estate. Alphonsus pulled the handbrake, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. On the passenger seat lay the burnt, leather-bound Williams ledger retrieved from the flames. The words PROTOCOL ASHFORD were stamped inside the ledger, pressing against the cabin air like an unexploded charge. "We shouldn't be here, Alphonsus," Cindy whispered, her eyes scanning the pitch-black tree line. "If they tracked us from the harbor, they know we're moving." "They know we reached the water," Alphonsus said, staring up at the dark silhouette of the ancestral house. "They don't know what Father built beneath it. The ledger didn't list an address, Cindy. It listed structural coordinates inside this foundation." He paused, his voice turning cold. "Protocol Ashford isn't another paper archive." Cindy turned to him, her gaze sha