Chapter 24 - JAMES’S LAST EXPERIMENT
Through the glass, Anna demanded the truth. Lydia claimed James developed the blocker that protected certain people from Lantern compounds. Anna inherited a rare trait that made the protection permanent. Her blood could either cure Lantern’s victims or help Lydia create a stronger version capable of overcoming resistance.
I refused to believe James willingly participated. Rachel supported me. James had created the blocker after discovering what the project did, intending to free the victims. Lydia twisted his research into another weapon.
Inside the chamber, Anna found three fingerprint panels. One stopped the signal, one released the canisters, and one erased the medical archive. The labels had been removed.
Simon arrived and recognized Lydia’s pattern. As a child, she gave him three doors during punishment exercises. The safest choice was never the obvious one. He told Anna to inspect the screws. Lydia always placed the true mechanism behind the panel most difficult to repair.
Anna chose the center panel.
The countdown stopped at four seconds.
The chamber opened, but a secondary program transmitted the entire archive to an unknown destination. Lydia had expected us to disable the weapon; doing so triggered the theft of every victim’s identity and medical profile.
Daniel traced the transfer to a satellite connection registered to the humanitarian ship Meridian, currently preparing to leave the harbor.
Thomas knew the ship. It belonged to a foundation controlled by one of Victor’s oldest friends, Senator Nathan Cole—Miriam’s brother.
Miriam closed her eyes. She admitted Nathan had introduced her to Victor and instructed her to protect certain files throughout her career.
Victor stared at her. “Were you ever truly loyal to me?”
Before she answered, news arrived that the Meridian had taken dozens of patients aboard—including people listed as dead in Project Lantern’s archive.
The evidence answered one question while creating several more dangerous ones. The events surrounding james’s last experiment could no longer be dismissed as one family quarrel. Anna asked Daniel to create three separate copies of every new record and place them with people outside Victor's company. She had learned that a single locked phone, altered document, or frightened witness could erase months of truth. Daniel agreed, but warned her that the conspiracy appeared to anticipate ordinary police procedure. From that point forward, every call would be verified face-to-face, every sample would receive two independent tests, and no one would travel alone.
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For Anna, fear had trained her to become invisible, yet every detail she remembered now became a weapon against the people who had silenced her. For Victor, authority could open doors, but it could not repair the years in which powerful people had chosen convenience over truth. For Daniel, evidence mattered only if it survived long enough to reach someone who had not already been bought or threatened. I watched these changes unfold with a mixture of pride and guilt. My instinct was still to take Anna home, lock the door, and stand between her and every danger. Yet the woman beside me was no longer asking to be hidden. She wanted names, dates, motives, and proof. She wanted to understand why her kindness had been mistaken for weakness and why the people closest to her believed fear would keep her obedient forever. When I apologized for not seeing the truth sooner, she squeezed my hand and told me the shame belonged to those who had created the fear, not to those deceived by it.
Daniel then reconstructed the latest movements on a paper timeline instead of a networked screen. A small inconsistency emerged: someone had acted before information should have been available. That meant the enemy was not merely watching from outside. Either a person in the group was still reporting every decision, or one of the devices believed to be secure remained compromised. Victor ordered a search, but Anna stopped him from announcing it. If a hidden observer believed the deception still worked, they could feed that observer carefully chosen information and follow the response.
