My daughter said a man enters our room every night… and that night I decided to pretend I was asleep to catch him.

Dr. Vance was hyperventilating beside the boxcar.

I rushed forward, reaching into the open doorway of Freight Car 42. My hand brushed against a cold, metallic object. I pulled out a heavy black leather briefcase.

Inside was an encrypted laptop, a high-clearance silver keycard bearing the logo of Vanguard Biopharmaceuticals, and a thick blueprint folder labeled PROJECT LAZARUS.

“We can’t do this,” Vance stammered, his teeth chattering uncontrollably as rain poured down his face. “Break into Vanguard?! It’s a Tier-4 secure medical facility! They have armed guards, biometric scanners, thermal cameras! It’s impossible!”

“It’s not impossible,” I said, my voice dead and cold.

I looked down at the silver keycard in my hand.

I opened the blueprint folder. Glued to the inside cover was a high-resolution photograph of a man in a lab coat standing inside a high-tech facility.

The man in the photo had graying hair, sharp blue eyes, and a distinct scar running through his right eyebrow.

I turned the flashlight beam directly onto Dr. Vance’s face.

The light caught the exact same scar running through his right eyebrow.

Vance gasped, stepping back, putting his hands up to cover his face.

“You son of a bitch,” I growled, grabbing Vance by his collar and slamming him hard against the wooden side of the freight car. “You told me you were just a hired doctor! You told me you didn't know who the Curator was!”

“I didn't! I don't!” Vance shrieked, tears mixing with the rain on his cheeks.

“This photograph was taken inside Vanguard Biopharmaceuticals!” I yelled, shoving the blueprint into his chest. “You worked there! You were one of the lead researchers on Project Lazarus!”

Vance broke down, slumped against the boxcar, dropping to his knees in the mud.

“I was!” he sobbed. “I was the chief bio-chemist on Project Lazarus three years ago! We were developing AP-9 to cure degenerative organ failure! It worked on primate trials! It was a miracle drug!”

“Then why wasn't it released to the public? Why did Sarah have to get it on the black market?!”

“Because Vanguard shut it down!” Vance cried out, looking up at me with eyes full of madness and rage. “The board of directors… they realized curing systemic diseases outright wasn't profitable! They wanted a drug that required lifelong daily treatments, not a single permanent cure! When I protested, they fired me! They stripped my license! They sealed the research in the vault!”

I stared at him, the pieces finally starting to click together into a terrifying, coherent picture.

“The Curator…” I whispered. “The Curator isn't some random black-market criminal. The Curator is someone inside Vanguard.”

“Yes!” Vance nodded frantically. “Someone who had access to the prototype synthesis! Someone who wanted to test AP-9 on a human subject! Sarah wasn't chosen at random, Mark! Sarah was selected because her medical profile matched the exact parameters required for Phase 3 human trials!”

My stomach dropped.

Sarah hadn't been saved out of the goodness of someone's heart. My wife was an unauthorized, illegal lab rat in a rogue pharmaceutical experiment.

“Who is he, Vance?” I demanded, shaking him violently. “Who is the Curator? Give me a name!”

“I don't know!” Vance cried. “There were five executives on the Lazarus oversight committee! It could be any of them! Please, Mark… you have to break into that vault. Not just for Sarah… but because if Vanguard merges with the European group on Thursday, they will incinerate the remaining Lazarus samples! The cure will be lost forever!”

I let go of Vance’s coat. He fell forward into the mud, coughing and sobbing.

I picked up the leather briefcase, holding the silver keycard tightly in my hand.

I was a high school history teacher. I didn't know how to bypass security cameras. I didn't know how to crack biometric locks. I didn't know how to steal a biological weapon from a corporate fortress.

But as I looked down at the encrypted laptop, I remembered something.

Three years ago, before Maya was born, Sarah’s younger brother, Ethan, had served four years in federal prison for high-level cyber-intrusion against corporate networks. Ethan was a genius programmer who had spent his youth tearing down firewalls for fun. He was currently living under court-ordered probation in a small apartment six blocks away.