Call an ambulance right now, Marcus—my daughter’s water just broke on your mother’s marble floor! I screamed, kneeling over Maya as fluid flooded her silk dress.
The master keycard Hank Burke had given me felt impossibly light in my hand, yet it held immense power. “State regulatory access,” he’d explained. “It’s for emergency situations, audits. Opens almost everything.”
Midnight. The hospital was a skeleton crew. I made my way to the subterranean medical records vault. The air grew colder, heavier, as I descended. The vault door, a monolithic steel slab, seemed impenetrable.
My heart hammered against my ribs. One wrong move, and I was caught. My career, already hanging by a thread, would be irrevocably severed. My chance at justice, gone.
I slid Hank’s keycard into the reader. It glowed green. The door hissed open with a hydraulic sigh.
Inside, rows upon rows of servers hummed, their indicator lights blinking like a digital city. I found the main terminal, its screen displaying an intricate web of patient data.
My fingers flew across the keyboard. “Paternity testing logs.” “Raw trial telemetry data.” “Holloway, Marcus.” “Washington-Holloway, Maya.” I knew the hospital’s system, knew where the unredacted files would be buried, away from casual viewing.
The data streamed, a torrent of truth. Paternity results that Marcus had suppressed, trial parameters he had manipulated, drug dosages he had lied about. It was all there, pristine and horrifying.
I plugged in my encrypted drive, a small, unassuming device, and began the download. The progress bar crept across the screen, each percentage point a victory against Marcus’s lies. The hum of the servers, the soft click of the hard drive—they were the sounds of justice downloading.
Finally, “Download Complete.” I ejected the drive, a physical embodiment of Marcus’s downfall. I slipped the drive into my pocket, the weight of it anchoring me. I hadn’t just secured evidence; I had secured the irrefutable digital chain of custody.
The vault door hissed shut behind me, leaving the servers to hum their secrets to an empty room.
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