Crucible Initiative - Sublevel 9 Archives - 4:47 AM
The body was still warm.
Senior Investigator Park crouched beside the corpse, careful not to touch the blood spreading across the vault floor. The dead man wore a researcher's white coat, now soaked red from throat to hem. His eyes stared at the ceiling, wide and empty.
"How long?" Park asked.
"Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty." The medical examiner pressed two fingers to the corpse's neck, checking for residual warmth. "Single clean cut, Professional."
Park stood and looked around the vault. Steel walls. Reinforced door. Cameras in every corner. The kind of security that cost more than most hunters earned in a lifetime.
"Cameras?"
"Looped. Someone fed them old footage for exactly eighteen minutes." The security chief pulled up a hologram from his wrist terminal. "From 4:23 to 4:41, our system shows an empty vault. Reality? Dr. Chen was being murdered."
