Chapter 7 - THE HIDDEN MEDICAL FILE
We didn’t wait for backup.
There was no time.
The storm had turned the abandoned Addison Street clinic into a rotting, rain-soaked nightmare.
Dominic kicked open the front doors.
The building smelled of charred wood and twenty years of rot.
“The incinerator room is in the back,” Dominic said, his voice grim.
We moved down the dark hallway, our flashlights cutting through the dust.
We found the heavy iron door of the old medical waste room. It was rusted shut.
The security chief and Anthony threw their weight against it. With a violent screech, the door gave way.
Inside, a massive metal chute led down into the darkness.
“There’s a maintenance ladder inside,” Dominic said.
He went first. Anthony followed. The security chief went next.
I climbed down last.
The air grew colder, thicker, smelling faintly of antiseptic and old paper.
We reached the bottom.
It wasn’t a dusty basement.
It was a fully functional, pristine medical bunker, hidden beneath the burned ruins of the clinic above.
Fluorescent lights hummed. Surgical trays were perfectly organized.
And sitting in a wheelchair in the center of the room was an elderly woman.
She was frail, her white hair thin, her eyes cloudy with age.
“Ma,” Dominic choked out.
He ran toward her.
“Dominic, wait!” I yelled, noticing the glint of wire beneath the wheelchair.
He stopped inches from her.
The wheelchair was rigged to a heavy explosive charge.
The old woman looked up at her son. Tears spilled over her wrinkled cheeks.
“Dominic,” she whispered, her voice frail. “You grew up.”
“I’m going to get you out, Ma,” Dominic said, his voice breaking.
Suddenly, a voice echoed from the shadows of the bunker.
“No, you’re not.”
A man stepped into the light.
He wore a pristine white doctor’s coat.
The left side of his face was a tapestry of horrific, melted burn scars. His left eye was milky white.
Dr. Elliot Kane.
He was holding a detonator switch in his hand.
“Hello, Dominic,” Kane rasped, his voice damaged from smoke inhalation decades ago. “You look just like your father.”
“Let my mother go, Kane,” Dominic said, keeping his hands away from his weapon. “This is between you and me.”
“It was always between you and me,” Kane smiled thinly. “You burned me alive to protect your brother’s precious conscience. You took my face. My career. My life.”
Kane looked at Anthony.
“So I decided to take yours. I watched your son grow up. I watched his heart begin to fail. I arranged for those CPAP inserts to be delivered. I was going to let him suffocate, just like Robert.”
“You’re a monster,” Anthony spat.
“I’m a doctor,” Kane corrected softly.
He walked over to a metal filing cabinet and pulled out a thick, yellowed medical file.
He tossed it onto the floor at Dominic’s feet.
“Read it, Dominic.”
Dominic didn’t move.
“I said read it!” Kane yelled, his thumb hovering over the detonator.
I stepped forward slowly and picked up the file.
I opened it.
It was a pathology report. Dated twenty-three years ago.
The patient name was Dominic Russo.
I read the summary. My breath caught in my throat.
I looked up at Dominic.
“Dominic,” I whispered. “You don’t have sleep apnea.”
Dominic frowned. “What?”
May you like
I looked at Kane, then back to the file.
“You have a slow-acting neurotoxin in your central nervous system.”
