Chapter 3 - THE OAK CREEK SECRET
Before I could process the horrifying weight of Dr. Vance’s words, the trauma bay doors flew open again.
Two men in charcoal suits, wearing heavy FBI windbreakers over their button-down shirts, strode into the room. They didn’t look like federal agents investigating financial crimes; they looked like men who cleaned up government messes.
“Dr. Vance,” the taller agent said, flashing a dark leather badge. “Agent Miller, and this is Agent Ross, CDC Bio-Surveillance Division. We’ll take it from here.”
I threw myself between the federal agents and Chloe’s gurney.
“You are not touching my daughter! What the hell is going on here? You know what this thing is!”
Agent Miller looked at me with cold, detached eyes. He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone carried the absolute authority of a man accustomed to enforcing compliance.
“Mrs. Miller, your daughter is carrying a classified biological specimen—Project Chrysalis. It was engineered at the Oak Creek Agricultural Research Facility located three miles behind your daughter’s elementary school.”
The room spun.
Oak Creek Elementary. The farmland surrounding the district. The mysterious nighttime rumblings the local town council always dismissed as routine seismic testing.
“A research facility?” I hissed, stepping closer to Agent Miller, my fingernails digging into my palms. “You put a bio-weapon inside a research facility right next to a public school? And one of your things got into my little girl?!”
“A containment breach occurred four days ago,” Agent Ross chimed in, stepping forward with a metal transport cylinder. “The larval stage of the organism is airborne during its initial cycle. It seeks out host bodies with high metabolic rates—children. It entered her system through inhalation while she was on the school playground.”
“And you didn’t warn anyone?” I screamed, my voice echoing off the tile walls. “You let hundreds of kids go to school every day while a parasite crawled into their throats?!”
“A public panic would compromise national security,” Agent Miller replied smoothly. He gestured to the two armed guards standing outside the trauma bay doors. “Prepare the child for immediate surgical extraction at our bio-containment facility. We’re seizing the specimen.”
“You’re not taking her anywhere!” Dr. Vance intervened, stepping directly in front of the agents, his broad shoulders blocking their path. “If you cut that thing out without specialized neuro-paralytic agents, the organism will release a localized neurotoxin that will liquefy her trachea within seconds! She will die on this table!”
Agent Miller glared at Dr. Vance. “If we don’t extract it within the hour, the specimen matures, breaks through her jugular, and destroys the containment zone anyway. We have orders to secure the asset at all costs.”
Asset. They were talking about my little girl like she was a broken piece of laboratory equipment.
I looked down at Chloe. Her eyes were glazed over with fever, her tiny hands weakly clutching the edge of the hospital sheet. She was fading fast. The thing in her neck pulsed harder, stretching her skin to its absolute breaking point.
I couldn’t fight the CDC alone. I couldn’t fight armed federal agents with bare hands.
But I knew something they didn’t.
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While Agent Miller was busy arguing with Dr. Vance, my hand slowly slid off the edge of the gurney, feeling around in the open pocket of my coat hanging on the nearby hook. My fingers brushed against my phone.
Without looking away from the agents, my thumb unlocked the screen, blindly tapped the emergency broadcast app I used for my investigative blog, and hit "Live Stream."
