Jon Harrison's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Jon folded the emergency protocol letter and slipped it into his jacket next to the photograph. The client wasn't just competition anymore—she was actively closing the gap. He needed to move. The hospital's quarantine shed sat thirty yards north of the collapsed tent. The shed's door hung off one hinge, twisted metal fence sections scattered across the pavement around it. Something had torn through the perimeter from the inside. Jon stepped over brick debris and pulled the door open. Dust hung thick in the air, illuminated by gaps in the corrugated walls. A small brick building stood at the back of the quarantine area—some kind of records archive, its reinforced glass windows still intact. He crossed to it and tried the handle. Locked, but the frame had loosened with age. One solid kick and the door gave way. Filing cabinets lined both walls, most drawers hanging open and empty. Jon worked through them systematically until he found what remained—a single weathered clipboard wedged behind the bottom drawer of the last cabinet. The papers clipped to it showed dates in red ink, each entry marked with timestamps and location codes. The first entry read "Sierra Transfer Protocol—Subject Batch C-7 arrived 0600." The second: "Containment procedures inadequate. Request additional shielding." The third, written in a shaking hand: "Recommend immediate evacuation. Cerberus specimens unstable." The final entry was dated three weeks before the bombs fell. Someone had documented the entire thing and then disappeared. Jon photographed each page, hands steady despite the implications. Project Cerberus hadn't just reached Broken Hills before him—it had been here for months, maybe years, using the hospital as a transfer point. The encrypted files at Sierra weren't just research data. They were operational records of an active deployment network. He pocketed the clipboard and headed for the door. The client knew about Sierra, but she didn't know about this. That gap was the only advantage he had left, and he intended to keep it that way.