The Woman Behind the Glass
Chapter 01 - The Woman Behind the Glass
At 11:47 p.m., every light in Helix Tower turned white.
Dr. Evelyn Cross stepped into the restricted research corridor and stopped so suddenly that one heel scraped across the polished floor. Twenty feet ahead, her closest friend, Lila Monroe, lay motionless beneath the ceiling lights. A thin red line crossed Lila’s wrist and disappeared beneath her sleeve. Her cream-colored dress was stained near the shoulder, and one hand rested against the glass as though she had tried to crawl toward the exit.
“Lila?” Evelyn whispered.
The corridor answered with an electronic chime.
Before Evelyn could kneel, Daniel Voss emerged from the shadows in a black suit. As chief executive of Helix Biomed, he was usually calm enough to make bad news sound harmless. Tonight, his jaw was tight and his eyes were fixed on Evelyn.
“Step away from her,” he ordered.
“She needs help.”
“She needed help ten minutes ago.”
The words struck harder than a slap. Evelyn looked at him, then at the security cameras above them. Their red lights were dark.
Daniel moved closer. “You accessed the clinical archive. You threatened to expose confidential files. Now Lila is on the floor, and you are the only person whose badge opened this corridor.”
“That isn’t true.”
“The access log says it is.”
Evelyn crouched beside Lila anyway. Her fingers hovered over Lila’s neck, but Daniel grabbed her wrist before she could check for a pulse.
“Don’t touch the evidence,” he said.
Evelyn stared at his hand. There was a fresh cut across his knuckles.
The corridor doors slammed shut behind them. A calm automated voice announced, “Containment protocol initiated. Manual authorization required.”
Daniel released her and approached the glass control panel. “You should have accepted my offer to leave the company quietly.”
Evelyn’s fear sharpened into suspicion. “What did you do to her?”
His expression did not change. “I’m going to make sure the board asks you that question.”
He pressed his palm to the scanner. Blue light traveled beneath his fingers, confirming his identity. The system began sealing the corridor, isolating it from the rest of the building.
Then Evelyn saw the red line around Lila’s wrist move.
It was not blood.
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It was a fiber-optic cable.
And beneath Lila’s still fingers, a tiny green light blinked three times—the signal they had agreed on.
