Chapter 13 - The Ticking Clock
The digital clock on the cabin wall glowed with unforgiving red numbers: 71:42:15. Less than nine hours left before Maya reached the seventy-two-hour threshold where patient zero had suffered total organ collapse.
Leo stood across the room, leaning against the wooden kitchen counter while Maya rested on the sofa, eating a bowl of warm soup brought by the federal medic. He noticed the sudden, intense whispering between Dr. Helen Vance and Agent Miller, sensing the familiar, heavy tension that always preceded bad news.
"You're hiding something from me again," Leo said, his voice cutting sharply through the quiet room as he walked over to them, his big expressive eyes fixed squarely on Helen's face.
Helen hesitated, exchanging a worried glance with Agent Miller before turning to face the boy. "Leo... we have a complication."
"What kind of complication?" Leo demanded, his fists tightening in the pockets of his olive-green jacket. "She's eating, she's talking, her temperature is normal! Look at her—she's better!"
"Externally, yes," Helen admitted, lowering her voice so Maya wouldn't hear from across the room. "But the cellular telemetry we ran ten minutes ago shows that Vector-9 is acting faster than anticipated. Her body is generating new tissue at an exponential rate. If we don't administer a neutralizing agent before the seventy-two-hour mark, her organs will begin to over-calcify."
"Then give her the antidote!" Leo snapped, his voice rising in panic. "There has to be a counter-formula! Vanguard Bio wouldn't design a serum without a kill-switch!"
"They designed one," Agent Miller interjected grimly, stepping forward. "But it's not stored here. The only existing stabilizing agent—Formula-X—is locked inside Vanguard Bio’s primary research facility in downtown Manhattan, two hundred miles away."
Leo stared at them in absolute disbelief. "Then let's go! Get a helicopter, drive a car, do whatever you have to do to get it!"
"It's not that simple, Leo," Agent Miller explained, shaking her head. "Sterling may be in federal custody, but his second-in-command, a ruthless corporate fixer named Marcus Vance—no relation to the doctor—has locked down the Manhattan facility with private mercenaries. Federal jurisdiction doesn't cover private corporate installations without a prolonged congressional injunction, which takes weeks to clear."
"We don't have weeks! We have less than nine hours!" Leo shouted, tears spilling over his lashes as his restraint finally broke. "If you won't go get it, I will!"
Before Agent Miller or Helen could stop him, Leo turned around, grabbed his heavy backpack from the floor, and bolted toward the front door.
"Leo, stop! You won't survive five minutes out there alone!" Helen cried out, sprinting after him.
Leo flung the front door open, stepping out onto the wooden porch into the freezing mountain night, only to freeze dead in his tracks as the beam of a high-powered flashlight pinned him against the doorway.
May you like
Standing at the bottom of the porch stairs, surrounded by four armed operatives in tactical black gear bearing Vanguard Bio insignia, was Marcus Vance himself, smiling coldly in the dark.
---
