Chapter 5 - Midnight at St. Jude's
5 - 15
The towering neon sign of St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital buzzed faintly in the midnight mist, casting an eerie, clinical blue glow over the silent emergency entrance. Inside the executive boardroom on the third floor, however, the lights were blazing.
The heavy oak doors were blown inward with a resounding crash as Marco kicked them off their reinforced hinges.
Two night-shift security guards rushed from the corridor, hands reaching for their sidearms, but Marco and his operatives moved with surgical precision. Within three seconds, both guards were disarmed, zip-tied, and seated neatly against the hallway wall.
Alessandro Duca walked into the executive suite with unhurried, terrifying calm. Dragging behind him by the collar of his ruined tuxedo was Dr. Alistair Vance, whose face was bruised, tear-streaked, and pale with terror.
Alessandro tossed the doctor onto the plush leather sofa in the center of the room. Dr. Vance curled into a fetal position, nursing his broken wrist and sobbing uncontrollably.
"Open the master terminal," Alessandro instructed Marco, gesturing toward the sleek, wall-mounted digital console behind the administrator's desk.
Marco stepped up to the console. "Locked behind biometric and password encryption, Boss. We’ll need Vance’s thumbprint and master override code to access the encrypted research archives."
Alessandro walked over to the sofa, grabbed Dr. Vance by the lapel of his jacket, and hauled him upright with effortless strength. He dragged the whimpering doctor across the room and slammed his right thumb down onto the glass biometric scanner beside the terminal.
BEEP.
A green light flashed on the console.
"Override code," Marco prompted.
Dr. Vance, gasping for breath, choked out a twelve-digit alphanumeric sequence. Marco’s fingers flew across the keyboard.
Within seconds, the massive main screen on the wall flickered, shifting from a corporate screensaver to a hidden, deep-encryption directory labeled: PROJECT VANGUARD – INTERNAL AFFAIRS / RICO FABRICATION LOGS.
Alessandro stepped back, folding his arms across his chest as he stared at the cascading lines of data scrolling down the display.
"Look at that," Alessandro murmured, his voice laced with ice. "Every falsified autopsy report for the past five years. Every illicit financial transfer from federal grant accounts to private offshore syndicates. And right here..."
He pointed at a specific file folder highlighted in red: Subject: Thomas Alvarez – Accidental Termination Protocol.
"There it is," Alessandro whispered. "The complete record of how your hospital murdered an innocent maintenance worker simply because he walked into the wrong archive room."
Sophia Alvarez stood quietly near the doorway of the boardroom, having insisted on accompanying Alessandro and his men to the hospital. She stared at the screen, her eyes wide with shock as the full, horrifying reality of her husband’s final hours played out in cold, digital text before her eyes. He hadn't died of a weak heart. He had been injected with a paralytic agent in the very hallway outside this room because he refused to sign a false confidentiality agreement.
Tears streamed silently down Sophia’s face, but this time, they were accompanied by a quiet, fierce resolve. The shadow of fear that had hung over her and her daughter for three long months finally shattered into a million pieces.
"Mr. Duca," Sophia said, her voice steady and clear in the quiet room. "What happens to him now?"
Alessandro looked at Dr. Vance, who was cowering on the sofa, begging for mercy.
"In my world, justice isn't handed down by corrupt judges or compromised politicians," Alessandro said coldly. He turned to Marco. "Send all these files directly to every major news outlet, investigative journalist, and federal oversight committee in the country. Simultaneously. Leave no backdoor for them to scrub it."
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"Done," Marco replied, hitting the final transmission key on the console.
"As for Dr. Vance," Alessandro continued, stepping toward the cowering administrator, "he will be escorted down to the hospital’s basement incinerator room. He can spend the rest of his natural life reflecting on the medical ethics of slow-acting poisons."
