THE MAN WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD

Gabriel stared into the vault.

It wasn’t a safe. It was a private elevator.

“Going down,” Gabriel said, motioning his men into the large steel box.

I grabbed Margaret by the arm, forcing her into the elevator with us. She trembled slightly as the doors closed and the elevator rapidly descended far past the basement levels of the building.

When the doors finally opened, the cold air hit us instantly.

We stepped out into a massive, cavernous underground facility. The scale of it was breathtaking.

It looked exactly like the warehouse where Anthony had held Gabriel, but multiplied by a hundred.

Rows upon rows of hyperbaric oxygen chambers lined the walls.

Most were empty. But at least twenty of them were occupied.

Men and women. Most of them older, wealthy-looking, connected to IVs and oxygen lines.

“What is this?” I asked, horrified.

“Immortality,” Margaret whispered. “Or as close to it as money can buy. The elite don’t just want to live longer, Katherine. They want to live forever. Anthony’s experiments on his sons were just the beta tests for neural transfer and cellular regeneration.”

Gabriel walked slowly past the chambers. He looked at the faces inside.

“That’s a federal judge,” Gabriel said, pointing to a man in a chamber. He walked to the next one. “That’s the CEO of a major defense contractor.”

“They pay billions for the treatments,” Margaret said defensively. “We cure diseases here that the public doesn’t even know exist yet.”

“By harvesting innocent people,” I said, disgusted. “You steal blood, bone marrow, and memories from people who don’t matter to you.”

Margaret didn’t deny it.

I walked over to a central control terminal. I began typing rapidly. The medical software was advanced, but the core architecture was similar to the hospital systems I had used for twenty years.

“What are you doing?” Margaret snapped.

“I’m downloading the patient manifests,” I said. “Every transaction. Every stolen organ. Every name.”

“You can’t take that public! It will crash the government!”

“Good,” Gabriel said from behind her.

Suddenly, a loud alarm blared through the underground facility. Flashing red lights bathed the room in a bloody glow.

“Security has been breached in Sector 4,” an automated voice announced.

Margaret laughed. “You tripped the silent alarm when you opened the vault. The facility guards are coming. Highly trained ex-military. You and your four mobsters don’t stand a chance.”

Gabriel didn’t look panicked. He slowly reached into his coat and pulled out his phone.

He pressed a single button and held it to his ear.

“Elena,” Gabriel said calmly. “Are they in position?”

I looked at him in shock.