Chapter 4 - The Midnight Extraction
The extraction had to look like an accident. If Clara suspected I was onto her, she wouldn't just leave; she would finish the experiment and destroy the evidence—including us. I told her I had an emergency shift at the hospital, leaving in the middle of the night. I went to the station, but I never left the perimeter of our neighborhood. I doubled back, parking three blocks away and walking through the back alleys until I reached the Victorian house, my kit bag packed with the essentials: sedatives, bolt cutters, and enough medical supplies to stabilize us both if things turned violent.
The house was eerily still, the air inside vibrating with a low-frequency hum that I had finally identified as a neural-entrainment device. I entered through the ventilation system I had already sabotaged earlier that week. I found Harper in her room, wide awake, waiting for me. She had her backpack ready, packed with the drawings—the only evidence we had. We moved through the halls like shadows, my heart hammering against my ribs, each step calculated to avoid the pressure-sensitive tiles Clara had installed in the hallway.
We reached the front door, but the floorboards groaned beneath my weight. I looked up to see Clara standing at the top of the stairs, her silk robe flowing like a dark liquid around her, her expression not one of anger, but of terrifying, clinical disappointment. She hadn't been on a trip; she had been waiting for this moment, knowing I would try to save the child. "You’re making a mistake, Ethan," she said, her voice smooth and devoid of human warmth. "She’s not a child. She’s a masterpiece in progress. Why would you want to ruin that?" She didn't attack; she simply clicked a remote in her hand. The lights in the house began to strobe, and a high-frequency sound began to pierce the air—a sound designed to incapacitate, to wipe the mind clean in seconds. My head felt like it was splitting open, and I knew we had only seconds before we were both lobotomized by the signal.
