Jon Harrison's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Jon stepped out of the quarantine shed and scanned the hospital grounds. The client was somewhere behind him, working from Kellerman's notes and whatever institutional resources she could bring to bear. But she didn't know about this place yet. He circled the hospital's west wing, eyes tracking the ground for anything unusual. A concrete lip protruded from the dirt near the loading dock—too uniform to be natural. Jon knelt and brushed away debris. A steel hatch lay beneath, sealed with a rusted mechanical lock. The quarantine records had mentioned Sierra Transfer Protocol. This had to be the access point. He worked the lock with a pry bar until it gave way, then hauled the hatch open. A concrete tunnel stretched into darkness below, metal rails running along its floor. Transport infrastructure. They'd moved specimens underground, avoiding surface roads entirely. Jon dropped into the tunnel and followed the rails north. His flashlight caught the outline of a cargo truck ahead, its reinforced frame wedged against the tunnel wall where it had been abandoned. The cargo box door hung open. Inside, restraint brackets lined the walls, their straps still stained dark. He photographed the interior, then noticed something wedged behind the driver's seat—a weathered map with red lines traced between two points. One marked the hospital. The other sat fifteen miles northwest, labeled in faded ink: Sierra Secondary. Not the main depot. A second transfer point the client almost certainly didn't know existed yet. Jon pocketed the map and headed back toward the hospital. The client had Kellerman's research and institutional backing, but she was working from incomplete data. She'd reach Sierra's main depot eventually, probably before he did. But the secondary site was his alone now. He climbed out of the tunnel and sealed the hatch, brushing dirt back over the concrete lip. The encrypted files were still the prize, but he'd just found a back door the client couldn't follow. That changed everything.