CHAPTER 24: WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
CHAPTER 24: WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
The emergency generators kicked in, casting an eerie, flickering amber light across the estate. Sophia and Edward rushed to the courtyard to calm the terrified patients, while Maya stayed behind to secure the servers.
But the bulldozer outside was a distraction.
As Maya frantically typed command codes to back up the encrypted emails she had found, the server room door clicked shut. The heavy deadbolt slid into place. Maya spun around to see Dr. Aris, the Center's most trusted head of psychiatric care, standing by the mainframe. He held a high-capacity electromagnetic drive in his hand.
"I'm sorry, Maya," Dr. Aris said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "The Center was a noble experiment. But Thorne offered me a ten-million-dollar research grant and a private clinic in Geneva. I just need to erase a few files before I leave."
The ultimate betrayal. Aris wasn't just erasing Thorne’s corruption; he was uploading doctored patient files to the public internet, falsely framing the Center for severe medical malpractice. It was a lethal smear campaign designed to destroy Sophia's credibility forever.
"You're a monster," Maya snarled, backing away from the console.
"I'm a pragmatist," Aris replied, plunging the drive into the master port. A progress bar flashed on the screen: UPLOADING CONFIDENTIAL DATA to PUBLIC DOMAIN. 10%... 20%...
If that bar reached one hundred percent, the Center would be shut down by federal regulators before sunrise. Maya had seconds to act. Relying on pure adrenaline, she grabbed a heavy fire extinguisher from the wall. She didn't aim for Aris; she aimed for the cooling unit above the mainframe.
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With a deafening crash, the heavy metal cylinder shattered the coolant pipes. Freezing liquid nitrogen sprayed violently across the server racks. The machines sparked, hissed, and violently short-circuited. The screens went dead.
Aris lunged at her in a rage, but Maya was faster. She slipped past him through the freezing vapor, unlocking the door and sprinting down the hallway, screaming for her mother. The data leak was stopped, but the war had officially moved inside their walls.
