Chapter 5 - Echoes Through the Intercom
The muffled sound of weeping drifted clearly through the open door, cutting through the sterile silence of the corridor. It wasn't Sophie's young voice, nor was it Victoria's sharp tones. It was raspy, frail, and unmistakably aged—the voice of Sarah Morel, Arthur’s bedridden mother, who supposedly hadn't uttered an intelligible syllable in half a year.
Marcus’s face tightened into a hard scowl. He reached out to push the heavy oak door shut, but Arthur was faster. With a burst of raw, controlled fury, Arthur slammed his palm against the door, shoving it wide open and sending Marcus stumbling backward into the control room.
"Get your hands off me!" Marcus barked, regaining his balance and reaching for the heavy rubber baton clipped to his belt.
Arthur ignored the guard entirely, his eyes locking onto the bank of glowing monitors mounted against the far wall. On screen three, the feed showed the interior of the east wing master bedroom. The specialized medical bed was completely empty, the sheets tossed aside in a frantic heap. On screen five, a hallway camera captured a figure in a gray woolen bathrobe wheeling an empty chair toward the service elevator.
"Where is she, Marcus?" Arthur demanded, stepping into the room and closing the distance between them with terrifying speed.
Marcus sneered, refusing to back down despite Arthur’s imposing presence. "You’re making a terrible mistake, Mr. Morel. You think you run this house, but Victoria holds the purse strings, the board votes, and the doctors’ signatures. You’re just a puppet dancing on her strings, and you don't even know the tune."
Sophie slipped into the room behind Arthur, her eyes darting across the control panels. With surprising dexterity, she reached out and hit a large red toggle switch on the main console. A loud click echoed through the room as the automatic security locks engaged, sealing the heavy oak door shut from the inside with a thick steel bolt.
"What are you doing?" Marcus yelled, lunging toward Sophie.
Arthur intercepted the guard with a devastating right hook to the jaw, sending Marcus crashing backward into a rack of server towers. The man slid to the floor, groaning and holding his bleeding lip.
Arthur turned to Sophie, his chest heaving with adrenaline. "How did you know about the override switch?"
Sophie didn't answer immediately. She was staring intently at the main monitor where the service elevator floor indicator was flashing a steady, glowing red. The elevator was moving downward, descending past the ground floor, straight into the subterranean sub-basements that hadn't been mapped on the estate's architectural blueprints since the 1920s.
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"Because my sister didn't just vanish from this estate three months ago," Sophie whispered, her voice trembling with cold fury as she turned to face Arthur. "She worked down there in the archives. And she found out what Victoria and your doctors did to your father's will before he died."
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