Chapter 4 - The Ghost of Geneva
The morning sun broke over the Pacific, casting a blinding, golden glare across the terrace where Victor had laughed just eighteen hours earlier.
The laughter felt like it belonged to a different lifetime.
In his private office on the third floor, Victor poured himself a finger of scotch, his hand shaking so violently the amber liquid sloshed against the crystal rim. He didn't drink it. He just stared at the dark amber surface, watching the reflection of his own exhausted face distort and break.
The Geneva project.
Back in 2018, before Sterling Corp became a tech-pharma conglomerate, Victor had poured billions into experimental regenerative therapy. He had been desperate—his twin daughters had been diagnosed with a degenerative spinal disorder that doctors said would leave them quadriphoid before their fifth birthdays. He had bought the best minds in the world, housed them in a secluded Swiss facility, and demanded results by any means necessary.
When the lead researcher, Dr. Aaron Reyes, discovered that the experimental gene-splicing serum had terrifying, irreversible side effects on test subjects, Victor panicked.
He didn't want a scandal. He wanted a cure.
When Aaron threatened to go public with the safety violations, Victor used his immense legal and financial leverage to crush him. The lab was raided, the records seized, and Aaron Reyes was driven out of the scientific community entirely, discredited and bankrupt.
Or so Victor had thought.
The heavy oak door swung open without a knock. Julian Cross walked in, his phone pressed to his ear. He muttered a quick goodbye, lowered the device, and dropped a fresh stack of documents onto Victor's mahogany desk.
"She's Aaron Reyes's daughter," Julian said bluntly. "Or rather... she's the subject of his final, unauthorized experiment. The one he injected into his own child before the lab burned down."
Victor looked up slowly. "Burned down? I thought it was a boiler explosion."
"It wasn't a boiler, Victor," Julian said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "The official report was bought and paid for. Aaron Reyes set the fire himself to destroy your prototypes so you couldn't harvest them. But he didn't die in the fire. And neither did his daughter."
Victor slammed his fist onto the desk, rattling the crystal decanter. "Then why is she here now? Why come to my house? Why heal my daughters if her father hated me?"
"She didn't come to heal them out of charity, Victor," Julian replied, tapping a single sheet of paper in the center of the stack. "She came to deliver a message. And she left a second file in your home security system’s physical override box in the basement."
May you like
Victor stood up slowly. "What's in the file?"
"Proof. Unredacted, cryptographically signed video logs from the Geneva lab. It proves that the paralysis your daughters suffered wasn't genetic at all, Victor." Julian paused, letting the words hang in the heavy air. "It was caused by the very serum you rushed into production before animal trials were even complete. You broke them. And Maya was the only one who could fix them."
