Douglas Berston's hands shook as he lifted his fifth cup of coffee. The bitter liquid splashed over the rim, staining his shirt cuff brown. Thirty years building contacts in this city. Thirty years of favors and handshakes and late-night conversations in smoky bars. Now Commissioner Vega wouldn't even take his calls.
"Gone."
García stood in the doorway of the interrogation room. Empty chairs. Empty table. The fluorescent bulb buzzed overhead like an angry wasp.
"What do you mean, gone?" Douglas set down his cup with trembling fingers. Coffee sloshed across his desk, spreading toward the stack of case files.
"Federal transfer. Four hours ago." García's tablet hung loose in her grip. She looked like someone had just told her the building was on fire. "Enhanced individuals. National security protocols."
Kasper pressed his palm against the window. The Rio de la Plata stretched out below, cargo ships lined up like toys against the art deco port. His nanobots had been agitated since dawn, flooding his bloodstream with combat chemicals his body couldn't burn off. Every sound felt amplified. Every light too harsh.
"Channel 7's running another segment." García's voice cracked. She never sounded uncertain unless something was seriously wrong.
The wall screen flickered to life. Same blonde reporter. Same crime scene tape fluttering behind her in the humid porteño breeze. But now she stood outside their building.
"Sources within the police department confirm that Association operatives used excessive force during yesterday's raid. Video evidence suggests systematic violations..."
"Video evidence?" Douglas stepped closer, his reflection ghosting across the screen. "We controlled all recording devices."
García pulled up data on her tablet, fingers moving in quick, nervous taps. "Someone's feeding them information. Operational details. Weapon specs." She paused, meeting his eyes. "Even quotes from our interrogations."
"From inside law enforcement." Kasper's voice carried no surprise. Just cold certainty.
"Has to be someone with high clearance." García's analytical mask was slipping. For the first time since he'd known her, she looked genuinely frightened. "The kind of access that takes years to build."
Douglas's phone buzzed against the metal desk. Mayor Vásquez. He stared at the name for three rings before answering.
"Berston."
"Douglas. My office. Thirty minutes."
"What about our prisoner?"
Static crackled through the line. Then: "What prisoner? Federal authorities found no evidence of wrongdoing."
The connection died with a sharp click.
García was staring at her tablet, face white. "Douglas, we have a problem."
"Another one?"
"Hospital admissions. Last forty-eight hours." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Surge in patients admitted for nervous exhaustion. Stress disorders."
Douglas felt ice forming in his stomach. "And?"
"They're all survivors." García's tablet trembled in her hands. "Former test subjects from pharmaceutical trials. All being transferred to Hospital San Rafael for specialized treatment."
Kasper turned from the window. His exoskeleton hummed with sudden awareness. "What kind of treatment?"
"Castañeda." García's voice went flat. "You remember those shell companies from the trafficking case? He's on their payroll."
The pieces clicked together in Kasper's enhanced mind with mechanical precision. Not random medical care. Collection. Isolation. Elimination of witnesses.
"It's a trap," Douglas said quietly. But even as he spoke, he knew it wasn't aimed at them.
"For the survivors," Kasper finished.
García scrolled through the admission list with shaking fingers. "There are children. Rui Rulvan. Lydia Ceballos. Both admitted this morning for psychological evaluation."
Douglas's coffee mug slipped from his fingers. It shattered on the concrete floor with a sharp crack. Hot liquid splattered across his boots, mixing with thirty years of accumulated scuff marks.
"How long do we have?"
"Transfer orders show procedures beginning tonight. Irreversible neurological intervention." García swallowed hard. "To treat trauma-induced delusions."
"They're going to lobotomize the witnesses." Kasper's voice carried dangerous undertones.
Thompson looked up from his monitoring station. His weathered face showed the strain of too many late nights and too much bad coffee. "Sir, we've got movement. Police units positioning around the building."
Through the window, patrol cars gleamed at every intersection. Chrome bumpers caught the afternoon sun like mirrors. Not random deployment. Coordinated containment.
"They're boxing us in," Kasper observed quietly.
Douglas grabbed his jacket, worn leather creaking as he pulled it on. "We need to get to the mayor's office before they decide we're too dangerous to meet with."
"Douglas." García wasn't moving toward the exit. She was staring at her screen with the expression of someone watching a building collapse in slow motion. "The hospital floor plans. I've been studying them since this morning."
Thompson cleared his throat. "Begging your pardon, but there's something you should know about San Rafael." His voice carried the weight of local knowledge. "My brother worked maintenance there in the twenties. Those old pneumatic mail tunnels? Still active."
García looked up from her tablet. "Underground service tunnels. Connected to the subway system before they rerouted the lines."
"Twenty-seven Project Lazarus survivors," García continued, her voice gaining strength. "All scheduled for the same procedure. All tonight."
Heavy footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Police officers, moving fast, making no attempt at stealth. The sound of boots on concrete like a countdown timer.
"Back exit," Douglas ordered, but his heart wasn't in the command. They all knew it was too late for politics.
Kasper wasn't moving toward escape routes. He was studying the hospital schematics, his enhanced systems calculating approach vectors and defensive positions. "The tunnels offer infiltration routes, but we'd be walking into a facility designed to contain dangerous patients."
"Sir," Thompson said quietly, "if you're thinking what I think you're thinking..." He paused, running a hand through his graying hair. "My brother mentioned something else. Emergency protocols. If things go sideways in that place, they lock it down completely. No one gets in or out."
"We need to go." García's composure cracked completely. "Now."
"No." Kasper's voice carried the finality of someone crossing a line they could never uncross. "We need to save those kids."
"It's suicide. The entire city apparatus is against us."
"Then we don't ask permission."
Douglas looked at his partner. He could see the familiar shift from Charles Ordemier to something much more dangerous. The afternoon light streaming through the windows seemed to darken around Kasper's silhouette.
Thompson stood up slowly from his monitoring station. "Sir, if you're going in there..." He reached into his desk drawer, pulling out a set of old building plans. "These might help. My brother left them to me when he passed. Hospital San Rafael. Complete architectural survey from 1924."
"If we do this, there's no going back," Douglas said, accepting the plans. "No political protection, no legal authority. We'll be true vigilantes."
"Some things matter more than politics," Kasper replied.
The boots were getting closer, heavy treads vibrating through the building's steel framework. In minutes, they'd be in custody while children were butchered in the name of covering up past crimes.
"Hospital San Rafael," Douglas said, making his choice and feeling thirty years of careful relationship-building crumble in real time. "We'll need a way in that doesn't trigger every alarm in the city."
García was already cross-referencing Thompson's old plans with her current data. "Service entrance through the morgue. Old tunnels from when it was connected to the subway system. They smell like death and carbolic acid, but they're unmonitored."
"And when every police officer in San Isidro comes looking for us?" Douglas asked.
"We'll be too busy saving lives to worry about jurisdiction."
The stairwell door burst open as the last member of their team disappeared through the emergency exit into San Isidro's underground arteries. By the time officers reached their command center, they found only empty coffee cups, broken ceramic, and computer screens still warm from recent use.
Three blocks away, in a maintenance tunnel that hadn't appeared on city maps for thirty years, where the air tasted of rust and forgotten decades, Kasper de la Fuente was no longer thinking about politics or public opinion.
He was thinking about children who deserved to live, and the people who needed to die to ensure that happened.
The underground darkness swallowed them like the mouth of some ancient predator. Somewhere ahead, Hospital San Rafael waited with its secrets and scheduled horrors.
Above them, the geometric spires of San Isidro pierced the evening sky, their Art Nouveau facades and wrought-iron balconies casting long shadows across a city that no longer recognized its own protectors.
Next Chapter Preview: At Hospital San Rafael, Project Lazarus survivors are being prepped for procedures that will erase their memories forever. But as Kasper, Douglas, and García infiltrate through tunnels reeking of decay, they're not the only ones with plans for tonight. In the shadows, Rui and Lydia have escaped their restraints, and something else hunts through the hospital corridors. The cyberllich has come to finish what Project Lazarus started, and the only thing standing between it and its victims is an unlikely alliance about to be forged in blood and desperation.