Chapter 5 - The Railyard Spectre
The next night at 11:30 PM, I stood in Maya’s room while she slept. I adjusted her blanket, moving her stuffed bear closer to her chin. My mother had come over to baby-sit under the guise that Sarah and I had an late-night emergency client meeting for her design business.
I walked downstairs, slipped on a dark rain jacket, and walked out into the cool October night.
Dr. Vance’s dark grey Volvo was parked idling at the corner of our street, its headlights turned off. I opened the rear door and slid onto the back seat.
Vance didn't look back at me. He just shifted the car into drive and pulled away from the curb.
The ride to the old industrial railyard near the river was utterly silent. Rain washed over the windshield in sheets, reflecting the orange glow of the streetlights as we left the suburban residential grid behind and entered the decaying factory district.
The railyard had been abandoned since the late nineties. Rusty freight cars sat stationary on overgrown tracks, surrounded by chain-link fences topped with rusted razor wire.
Vance slowed the Volvo down, turning off the main road onto a pitted gravel track that wound through a cluster of dilapidated brick warehouses. He parked the car behind an overturned shipping container, keeping the engine running, the lights completely blacked out.
“He leaves the package inside Freight Car 42,” Vance whispered, pointing through the rain-streaked window toward a massive, rusted red boxcar sitting fifty yards away on a dead-end spur line. “I drop the empty vials in a metal bin by the door, grab the new insulated cooler, and leave.”
“How does he get the money?” I asked.
“It’s wire-transferred automatically from that Cayman account to a shell company in Panama every Monday,” Vance replied. “I don't handle cash. I just get my fee wired to my offshore account.”
I checked my watch. 11:58 PM.
“Stay in the car,” Vance ordered, grabbing a flashlight from his glovebox.
“Like hell I am,” I muttered, opening the rear door.
“Mark, don't!” Vance hissed. “If he’s watching—”
“I’ll stay in the shadows,” I snapped, sliding out into the pouring rain.
The air smelled of wet rust, creosote, and stagnant river water. I kept low, moving along the side of a rusted tank car, my shoes sinking into the mud. I watched Vance walk toward Freight Car 42, his flashlight beam cutting a narrow cone of white light through the dark downpour.
The heavy sliding door of Freight Car 42 was propped open by a thick wooden beam. Vance approached carefully, lifting his flashlight to shine it inside.
Suddenly, a blinding floodlight snapped on from the roof of the adjacent warehouse.
The white light illuminated the entire railyard, casting sharp, unnatural shadows across the tracks. Vance gasped, dropping his flashlight and putting his hands up to shield his eyes.
“Vance!” a loud, electronically synthesized voice boomed from a loudspeaker hidden somewhere in the steel girders above us. The voice was cold, mechanical, completely stripped of human timbre. “You brought company.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. I flattened my back against the steel side of the tank car, gripping a heavy iron wrench I had pulled from my coat pocket.
“He forced his way into the car!” Vance yelled toward the light, his voice cracking with panic. “He knows everything, Curator! He knows about the Cayman account!”
A long, agonizing pause stretched over the railyard. The only sound was the roar of the rain and the rhythmic thrumming of Vance’s idling Volvo engine.
“Mark Miller,” the mechanical voice echoed off the rusted steel walls. “Step into the light.”
I swallowed hard, my mouth bone-dry. I stepped out from behind the tank car, squinting against the blinding intensity of the floodlight.
“Who are you?!” I shouted into the glare. “Why are you using my name?! What do you want from my family?!”
A small, high-pitched hum vibrated through the air. On the wooden platform of Freight Car 42, a sleek, black military-grade drone descended from the rafters, hovering five feet above the ground. A small camera lens glinted on its underside, pointed directly at my face.
Mounted beneath the camera was a small, high-definition speaker.
“I don't want anything from your family, Mark,” the synthesized voice issued from the drone. “I am protecting your family.”
“By framing me for money laundering?!” I roared, taking a step toward the drone. “By giving my wife illegal drugs in secret?! By making my daughter terrified in her own home?!”
“Your wife is alive because of me,” the voice replied calmly. “The medical system in this country left her to die. I provided the cure. The Cayman account was set up in your name so that if law enforcement ever intercepted the supply chain, the investigation would lead to a dead-end civilian—you—giving us enough time to clean the network and disappear.”
“You sacrificed me!” I screamed.
“A necessary collateral risk,” the voice said without a shred of emotion. “But things have changed. You woke up. You ruined the protocol.”
The drone raised its altitude by two feet. A tiny red laser dot bloomed on the chest of my rain jacket.
“What are you going to do?” I whispered, freezing in place. “Kill me?”
“No,” the voice said softly. “Killing you would attract too much attention. But since you are so eager to take control of your wife’s survival… you will now perform her final task.”
“What task?”
The drone’s camera zoomed in on my face.
“Dr. Vance’s supply of AP-9 is exhausted. The final, permanent cure—the genetic stabilizer that will eradicate the amyloidosis from her system forever—is locked inside a bio-containment vault at Vanguard Biopharmaceuticals in downtown Chicago.
In forty-eight hours, Vanguard is merging with a European conglomerate. The vault contents will be destroyed.”
The red laser dot shifted from my chest, pointing toward the dark interior of Freight Car 42.
“Inside that boxcar,” the Curator whispered through the drone, “is a keycard and a security blueprint. You have thirty-six hours to break into Vanguard Biopharmaceuticals and steal the cure. If you succeed, your wife lives a long, healthy life. If you fail… or if you call the police… Dr. Vance will be executed, the Cayman funds will be deleted, and Sarah will die within three days.”
The drone suddenly cut its power, dropping like a stone onto the wet gravel and smashing into pieces.
May you like
The floodlight snapped off.
The railyard plunged back into total, suffocating darkness.
