Chapter 5 - Infiltration at Highstone
The plan changed at five o'clock that evening.
A single encrypted text message appeared on Daniel’s private cell phone from an unknown, untraceable number:
*“Terminal dose scheduled for 22:00. Highstone Wing D. They won't let him see tomorrow’s sunrise.”*
Daniel slammed the brakes of the Audi on the shoulder of Interstate 87, twenty miles south of the Highstone Psychiatric Facility. Rain was turning into thick, wet slush that gathered along the wipers.
Sophia leaned over from the passenger seat, staring at the screen. “Who sent that?”
“Someone inside,” Daniel said, his face pale. “Someone who still remembers what loyalty to my father means. They’re not going to keep him locked away, Sophia. Richard knows I know. He’s closing the ledger tonight.”
“Highstone is a fortress,” Sophia said, pulling up the architectural schematics she had downloaded from the state’s public records archive before the database was scrubbed. “It was built in the 1970s as a high-security forensic hospital. Double-perimeter razor fences, biometric card access for every ward, private armed security. You can't just walk in with a corporate ID.”
Daniel looked at her, his eyes cold, calculating, and predatory. The Wall Street raider who had spent ten years outmaneuvering cutthroat hedge funds was now fully awake.
“I don't need to walk in with an ID,” Daniel said. “We’re walking in with a body.”
Forty-five minutes later, an ambulance bearing the livery of Hudson Valley Medical Transport pulled up to the rear security gate of Highstone. The rain had intensified, howling through the bare pine trees that bordered the compound.
The heavy steel gate rattled as a guard stepped out of the bulletproof guard shack, his flashlight beam slicing through the downpour.
“Gate is closed for non-scheduled intakes,” the guard shouted, knocking his knuckles against the driver’s window.
The window rolled down. Daniel Blackwood was sitting behind the wheel, wearing a dark EMT rain slicker, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.
“Emergency transfer from St. Jude’s Hospice,” Daniel said with crisp, urgent authority. “Patient has an acute infectious encephalopathy, high viral load. Transfer authorized under the Blackwood Charitable Health Mandate. You want to delay us and explain to the Department of Health why you turned away a biohazard case?”
The guard hesitated, shining his flashlight into the rear compartment.
Through the tinted glass, Sophia was kneeling beside a gurney, clad in full blue personal protective equipment, complete with a face shield and an oxygen mask. On the gurney lay a human form covered in a thermal emergency blanket, an IV drip bag swaying rhythmically from the ceiling hook.
“Let me see the manifest,” the guard said, reaching for his clipboard.
Daniel didn't give him the chance. He lunged out of the window, his left hand clamping over the guard’s mouth, his right arm locking around the man’s neck in a textbook sleeper hold. The guard struggled for three seconds, his heels kicking uselessly against the wet asphalt, before his muscles went limp.
Daniel dragged the unconscious guard into the shack, hit the manual override switch for the electric gate, and stripped the man’s keycard and radio.
Within four minutes, the ambulance was backed into the underground loading bay beneath Wing D.
The air inside the basement corridor was sterile and frigid, smelling of bleach, industrial ammonia, and damp concrete. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead with a dull, low-frequency hum.
Sophia stripped off her plastic face shield, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. In her hand, she clutched a medical kit she had stolen from St. Jude’s—two vials of flumazenil, three auto-injectors of atropine, and an endotracheal intubation kit.
“Room 104,” Sophia whispered, pointing to the end of the long, tiled corridor where a private security guard was stationed outside a heavy reinforced steel door.
The guard stood up, reaching for his holster as soon as he saw Daniel and Sophia emerge from the shadows. “Halt! Restricted area—”
Daniel didn't slow down. He closed the twenty-foot distance in three strides. When the guard drew his Glock, Daniel deflected the weapon upward, drove an open palm directly into the man’s nose—shattering the cartilage with a wet snap—and swept the guard’s legs out from under him. The man’s head struck the concrete floor with a hollow thud, knocking him unconscious instantly.
Daniel grabbed the guard’s master keycard and swiped it through the reader beside Room 104.
The magnetic lock released with a heavy *clack*.
Daniel threw the door open.
Inside, Arthur Blackwood was strapped to a low steel bed by five-point leather restraints. An intravenous line was running into his right arm from an automated infusion pump that was quietly beeping. His skin was gray, his breathing shallow and rattling in his throat.
Beside the bed stood Dr. Julian Ross.
Ross was holding an open ampoule of potassium chloride, about to inject it into the secondary port of the IV line.
Ross froze, his eyes widening in pure, unadulterated panic as he saw Daniel.
“Daniel—wait! You don't understand what he was going to do!” Ross shrieked, backing against the wall, holding the syringe out like a dagger. “He was going to transfer all the offshore trusts! He was going to expose thirty years of defense contracts! He would have destroyed the family!”
Daniel didn't say a word. He stepped into the room, grabbed Ross by the throat, and slammed him against the concrete wall with enough force to knock the breath entirely out of the doctor’s lungs. The syringe fell from Ross’s fingers, shattering on the floor.
“You gave him an overdose of succinylcholine, didn't you?” Sophia yelled, dropping to her knees beside Arthur, checking his neck for a carotid pulse. “His pupils are non-reactive! He’s in respiratory arrest!”
She didn't wait for an answer. She plunged an auto-injector of atropine directly into Arthur’s thigh, then ripped the IV line from his arm, letting blood pool onto the white sheets.
Arthur gasped, his entire body arching off the mattress as the drug flooded his failing heart. His eyes snapped open—cloudy, bloodshot, but lucid.
He looked up at Daniel, then at Sophia.
May you like
“The lake...” Arthur wheezed, his fingers clawing at Daniel’s jacket sleeve with desperate, failing strength. “Daniel... they never... they never turned off the life support. She’s... she’s still breathing the cold air.”
***
