Chapter 9 - The Vent Protocol
The dining room table sat under a vintage brass chandelier that cast long, skeletal shadows across the mahogany surface. Daniel dropped to his knees, ignoring the sharp edge of the brass floor register beneath the center leaf of the table. Clara knelt beside him, her trembling fingers clutching his sleeve as he pulled a small screwdriver from his pocket to loosen the rusted screws holding the vent cover in place.
"Julian always said this was the emergency drop," Clara whispered, her teeth chattering from the cold air rushing up from the crawlspace.
Daniel removed the heavy metal grid and thrust his hand into the dark opening. His fingers brushed against something cold and metallic wrapped in plastic. He pulled it out into the dim light of the dining room. It was a ruggedized tactical tablet, its screen dark, with a blinking blue LED indicator glowing near the headphone jack.
He pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life, illuminating his tense, sweat-beaded face with a harsh blue glow. A single video file was queued and waiting for playback, labeled with a timestamp from three minutes ago.
Daniel pressed play.
The screen showed a live, night-vision feed of the pine forest behind their house. Lily was walking hand-in-hand with a tall figure wearing a dark parka, moving deeper into the shadows toward an unmarked utility van parked on the old logging road. Lily wasn't crying; she looked calm, her gaze fixed straight ahead as if she were sleepwalking.
"She's wearing the neural band," Clara gasped, pointing a shaky finger at the tiny, glowing blue ring fastened around Lily's left wrist in the video. "They're calibrating her baseline right now."
Daniel watched in horror as the man in the parka turned toward the camera, briefly lifting his hood. The face illuminated by the infrared light wasn't Agent Vance, and it wasn't a stranger. It was Julian, looking ten years older than the man Daniel remembered burying, with a jagged scar running down the left side of his jaw.
"Julian is alive," Daniel breathed, the impossibility of the revelation crashing against the cold reality of the screen.
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Before Clara could answer, the tablet speaker hissed with static, and Julian’s real-time voice echoed from the device, addressing Daniel directly from the dark woods outside.
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