Nightfall Protocol

Chapter 15:The Scientist

Sarah Voss didn't waste words.

She stood across the desk from Andrew with the open folder between them and spoke with the clipped precision of someone who had been rehearsing this conversation in their head for the last three hours while navigating zombie-infested streets alone. Andrew listened without interrupting, arms crossed, eyes moving between her face and the documents she was laying out one by one on the desk surface.

It had started, she said, approximately six weeks ago.

A new research directive had come through Mercy General's pathology department — classified, federal-level clearance required, routed through the hospital's board without passing through normal institutional channels. The directive concerned a specific strain of reanimation-capable pathogen that, according to the accompanying documentation, had been recovered from a field site overseas and required controlled urban environment testing before any containment protocol could be properly developed.

Andrew held up a hand. "They told your department this was a controlled test."

"They told the two senior pathologists who were read into it, yes." Voss's jaw tightened. "I was not among them. I found out because one of those pathologists — Dr. Raymond Chu — came to me four days ago. Frightened. He said the directive had changed. That what began as a containment study had shifted into something else. That the people running it weren't interested in stopping the pathogen." She paused. "He said they were interested in how fast it moved through a populated area."

The room had gone very still. Jack Mercer was standing near the corridor door pretending to review something on a clipboard and fooling nobody.

"Where is Dr. Chu now?" Andrew asked.

Voss's expression answered before her words did. "He was found dead in his office yesterday morning. Ruled a suicide by the responding officers." She looked at Andrew steadily. "Raymond Chu was one of the most stable, deliberate people I have ever known. He had three grandchildren and a vegetable garden and a trip to Portugal booked for next spring."

Andrew said nothing.

"After Raymond came to me I started pulling everything I could access without triggering the security flags on the classified files. Camera footage, access logs, visitor records for the morgue level." She tapped the manila folder. "It took me forty eight hours to compile this. I was on shift when the pathogen was released last night, which is the only reason I'm still alive — I was in a sealed lab environment when the ventilation system was activated." Her eyes didn't waver. "Everyone else on that floor had a different outcome."

Andrew picked up the photograph again. The figure in the expensive coat and the federal lanyard. "You don't know who this is."

"I know the lanyard." She reached into the folder and produced a second image — a close crop of the insignia, enhanced and printed on a separate sheet. "That's an ORDA clearance badge. Office of Research and Defense Applications. It's a federal body that officially ceased operations in 2019." She let that sit for a moment. "Officially."

Andrew set both photographs down side by side.

ORDA. A ghost agency running a live pathogen test in a major city's hospital. A suicide that wasn't. A cover story built around a police officer's name and badge number, assembled and broadcast before the bodies had even begun moving.

The architecture of it was almost elegant in its ugliness.

"They needed a face," Andrew said quietly, thinking aloud rather than speaking to the room. "Before this went public, before anyone started asking questions, they needed someone credible enough to be believable as a suspect but isolated enough not to have immediate institutional protection." He looked up. "Someone whose movements they could track. Who'd been called to the morgue and could be placed at the origin point."

Voss nodded slowly. "The 911 call that brought you there last night. I found the access log for the hospital's emergency communication system." She pulled a third sheet from the folder. "It was placed from inside the building. From the morgue level itself." She paused. "Forty minutes before the pathogen was released into the ventilation system."

Andrew's eyes dropped to the sheet.

The call had been placed from a terminal registered to a temporary access credential. Created forty eight hours prior. Under a name that meant nothing — a clean ghost identity with no history before its creation date and no doubt no history after tonight either.

Someone had built the trap with considerable patience and considerable resources and they had built it specifically around him.

The question that mattered now was why him specifically. That answer was still somewhere out in the dark city, waiting to be found.

The corridor door opened and a young officer Andrew vaguely recognised from earlier appeared, jacket on, keys in hand. "Car's running, sir. Fuelled and ready."

Andrew straightened and began gathering the photographs back into the folder. He looked at Voss. "This comes with me."

"I assumed it would." She was already zipping her canvas bag. "I'm coming with you."

"No."

"Officer Callahan —"

"You are the only person in this building who understands the medical dimension of what's out there." He held her gaze without apology. "If thirty one civilians come through that door with bite wounds and deteriorating vitals I need someone here who can manage the timeline on what happens next. You know this pathogen better than anyone alive." He paused. "Possibly better than anyone, full stop, given what happened to Dr. Chu."

Voss held his gaze for a long moment with the expression of someone who found the logic sound and resented it anyway. Then she gave a single sharp nod and held out her hand for the folder.

Andrew handed it back. "Keep it secure. Keep yourself secure." He looked at Jack. "Mercer. Nobody in or out without your authorisation while I'm gone. If anyone comes through that door claiming federal credentials of any description —"

"They wait outside until you're back," Jack said flatly. "Understood."

Andrew picked up the M4 and moved toward the exit. He paused at the door and keyed the radio.

"Mia. We're moving. Fifteen minutes."

The response came back immediately, as though she'd been holding the radio the entire time.

"Understood. Main entrance on Hargrove. I'll be listening for you."

"How are your thirty one?"

A brief pause. "Holding. The bite case is —" Another pause, shorter, telling. "We need to move quickly on that one."

Andrew's hand tightened on the door frame.

"Fifteen minutes," he repeated, and pushed out into the cold.

The car was idling at the kerb, exhaust curling white in the fog. Andrew pulled open the passenger door and folded himself in, the M4 between his knees, the folder tucked inside his jacket against his chest where it would stay dry and stay present.

The young officer behind the wheel — Chen, according to the name tag — looked straight ahead with both hands on the wheel and the particular focused expression of someone who had decided that professionalism was their best available armour.

"Hargrove Street," Andrew said. "Fast as the streets allow."

Chen pulled out without a word.

The precinct light shrank in the wing mirror and the dark city closed around them, fog-thick and silent, the streets empty in that wrong way Andrew had stopped finding surprising and started finding instructive. The emptiness told him things now. Where movement had been. Where it was likely concentrated. Where the night was thinnest.

He watched the streets slide past the window and thought about a federal lanyard and a ghost agency and a trap built around his name with six weeks of careful preparation.

Someone had chosen him for a reason.

He intended to find out what it was.