CHAPTER 6: DONOVAN
CHAPTER 6: DONOVAN
Elsewhere, in a warm office that still smelled like coffee and paper instead of ice and steel, Donovan stared at my message.
Then he stood up.
“No,” he said quietly to his assistant. “Cancel everything. Move the forensic team to HarborLock immediately.”
He didn’t ask questions.
That was why I trusted him.
Because some people debate morality.
Others prepare for consequences.
CHAPTER 7: THE SYSTEM BEGINS TO TURN
By the time Nathan reached his car, the first invisible shift had already begun.
He didn’t notice it.
Men like him never do.
Not at first.
But somewhere behind him, in the infrastructure he believed obeyed him, access logs were being duplicated.
Security feeds were no longer singular.
Emails were no longer private.
And Unit Seven…
was no longer silent.
A concealed emergency channel—activated remotely by Donovan’s engineers—blinked to life inside the freezer wall.
A thin red indicator.
Alive.
Watching.
Recording everything.
CHAPTER 8: INSIDE THE ICE, A PLAN FORMS
I saw it.
Faint.
Almost invisible against frost.
A light.
Not rescue yet.
But proof.
Proof that I was not alone inside what they built for my disappearance.
My fingers moved again.
More precise now.
Less human.
More operational.
I didn’t think about Nathan.
Or Miriam.
Or the woman he planned to marry before my body was even cold.
I thought about structure.
Timing.
Exposure.
May you like
And the moment they would realize the mistake they made wasn’t locking me inside.
It was assuming I would stay inside long enough to become a victim.
