Chapter 4 - The Voice in the Darkness
The emergency lights pulsed red across the meeting room.
Marta touched her neck again, hoping the key had only fallen beneath her uniform. It had not.
“Who took it?” Robert demanded.
No one answered.
The security officer checked the room quickly. Victor stood near the window. Henrik and his colleague remained beside the table. David was gone.
“The development director,” the officer said. “He must have slipped out when the lights failed.”
Marta barely heard him.
Only one sentence filled her mind.
Your mother is still alive.
The voice had been low, but familiar. It did not belong to David or Victor. It came from someone who had been standing close enough to know exactly when the lights would fail.
Robert pulled out his phone, but there was no signal.
“The building network is dead,” he said.
Victor looked toward the ceiling cameras.
“Then whoever planned this controls more than the room.”
Marta studied him.
“You knew the key could open the hidden archive.”
Victor said nothing.
Henrik stepped between them.
“We need to reach the executive elevator before David does.”
The security officer opened the meeting-room door. The corridor outside was empty, illuminated only by weak red lamps. Every office door stood open, but the employees had disappeared.
“Where is everyone?” Robert asked.
“Evacuation alarm,” the officer replied. “Someone must have triggered it silently through the internal system.”
They moved quickly down the corridor.
Marta walked beside the wall, trying to understand the impossible message. Her mother had died twenty-two years earlier. Marta had identified her belongings and attended the funeral.
But she had never seen the body.
The coffin had remained closed because of what authorities called severe injuries.
At the elevator, Victor suddenly stopped.
A small metal panel beside the buttons had already been removed.
Behind it was an empty slot.
“The key is inside,” Marta said.
The elevator doors opened.
David stood in the car, holding Marta’s key against the hidden control plate.
Beside him was a tall woman in a gray suit.
Marta recognized her immediately.
The woman had been standing across the street from her apartment for months.
David pressed the lowest button.
The doors began to close.
Marta lunged forward, but the woman raised a pistol.
“Stay where you are,” she warned.
Before the doors sealed, David looked directly at Marta.
“I am sorry,” he said. “But if your mother is truly alive, she is not the person you remember.”
The elevator descended.
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Then, from somewhere beneath their feet, a powerful explosion shook the entire building.
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