34. Wraith
Chapter 34
Wraith
S tatic.
Chestnut Hill is the last place she exists on camera.
My jaw ticks. Hands already flying over the keys.
I backtrack—frame by frame—until I catch it.
The license plate. Blurred by morning glare, but not enough to save them.
The license plate is legit.
Not a burner. Not swapped.
Government-tagged. Commercial class.
Surprising.
I run it through the usual channels.
DMV. Commercial vehicle logs. Private transport registries.
It hits.
Black sedan. Registered to a Jersey-based security firm.
Legal. Insured. Everything exactly how it should be.
Which is the problem.
It’s too perfect.
I move deeper—backend vendor history, contract logs, scheduling databases.
There.
A work ticket dated January 1st.
Requested just after midnight.
Pickup location: her building.
Label: Sensitive Wellness Transit.
No destination. No return.
Not standard. Not even close.
I trace the billing trail.
The invoice routes to a company I don’t recognize.
Name sounds medical, but there’s no license on file.
No office. No staff. No paper trail.
Dead end on purpose.
A shell built for one job.
And I already know what it was.
They used a real firm to cover their tracks.
But the assignment itself?
Fake. Isolated. Designed to vanish a person without setting off alarms.
They didn’t just take her.
They planned to erase her.
And someone paid a lot to make that happen.
Fucking waste of their money?—
No way I’m letting that happen.
I run the box number through old corporate registries—state-level filings, defunct merger metadata, vendor cross-links.
Use it like a cipher.
Follow the trail through three shell acquisitions .
It hits.
A buried contract name shows up. Not once. Not twice.
Too many times to be coincidence.
Ashgrove Hills Mental Wellness Center.
Private facility.
No patient reviews. No press. No records outside of redacted tax filings and one security violation from ten years ago.
Outside Philly.
Remote. Cold. Designed for quiet.
And behind all of it?
A fortress built to disappear people.
I breach the node tied to the fake division.
Offshore ledgers. Proxy filters stacked twelve layers deep.
But not deep enough.
One wire transfer jumps out.
Six figures.
Two days ago.
Destination: Ashgrove Hills.
The source? A shell company buried so deep it’s practically subterranean—quiet, high-volume, and too clean to be real.
The kind of node that only shows up when something big is being moved… or buried.
I follow the digital blood trail.
It lands on one name.
Dr. Gideon Voss.
Oley flicks his tail behind me like he knew it would come to this.
Like he’s been waiting to hear that name all damn day.
Of course.
The man she still calls Daddy.
The one she trusts without question.
He’s the one who signed the fucking check.
Paid to have her taken.
Like she’s some problem to be removed.
My jaw locks.
Pulse kicks sideways.
What kind of father hands over his daughter like that?
Their system’s armored.
Layered encryptions. Redundant traps. Hidden kill codes that fry the node if triggered.
Cute.
They built it to keep out watchdogs.
They didn’t build it for me.
They never do.
I slip past the perimeter firewalls.
Kill the trace protocols.
Strip their logs bare and leave no shadow behind.
Then I’m in.
I pull up the entry logs
Filter by time. Date.
New Year’s Day.
There.
Subject 233 – Alias: Lilian V.
Admission time: 07:02 a.m.
Transport: Private security escort.
Status: Active observation.
Primary Diagnosis: Behavioral instability with identity fragmentation indicators.
That’s her.
Assigned protocol :
“Targeted Cognitive Reduction.”
Physician Requested.
My stomach turns.
It’s dressed up in clinical jargon.
But I know what this is.
This isn’t therapy.
This isn’t treatment.
This is surgical compliance.
A fucking brain wipe.
I click on the video attached.
The screen flickers.
Surveillance feed.
The black sedan.
People in scrubs.
Her robe. Her slippers. Her bloodied hand.
Behind her?—
Voss.
He signed the order himself.
Gideon Voss.
Of course he fucking did.
She says something I can’t hear.
But I don’t need to.
I see the way she reaches for him like a daughter.
And the way he doesn’t even blink.
You put her in that place.
You fed her to them.
My jaw locks.
Knuckles white.
Something breaks behind my eyes.
“You took her.”
Then lower. Sharper.
“She’s mine.”
I don’t waste time with visitor logs.
She hasn’t seen anyone.
Not since they took her.
I dig deeper.
Access hierarchy.
Trial index.
Medical research contracts hidden under layers of compliance bullshit.
Then I see it?—
Threxis Biotech.
Over and over again.
Trial after trial.
Every goddamn file has their name on it.
Experimental compounds.
Neural suppressants.
Behavioral erasure through forced neuroplastic collapse.
What the fuck are they running in here?
This isn’t a facility.
It’s a test lab in disguise.
She’s not a patient.
She’s a subject.
A variable in a trial they’ve buried beneath sanitized language and bureaucratic padding.
I filter the archive.
Strip the tags.
Pull raw data logs.
Patient IDs.
Then—
I see it.
Subject 233 – Admitted 01/0 1
Alias: Lilian V.
Primary diagnosis: Behavioral disassociation with suspected identity compartmentalization
Assigned protocol: CRS Trial – Cognitive Reintegration via Pharmaceutics
Overseen by: Threxis Biotech | Subdivision: Cognitive Compliance Unit; Doctor Julian Salinas
Trial Compound: Cerberus-Derived Stimulant – Test Formula S3X-A
Status: Ongoing. First dose administered 01/01 @ 0700 hours
Objective: “Target splinter personalities for destabilization and elimination. Monitor viability of remaining identity for external compliance. Begin code transfer if successful.”
I stop breathing.
They’re not studying her.
They’re trying to fucking erase her.
My hands curl into fists.
One word hits the screen like an axe to the chest.
Elimination.
Neri.
The part of her that fights.
The part that bites back.
The part that won’t be tamed.
And Lily?—
She’s too sweet. Too soft.
She’ll cooperate if they ask nicely.
They’ll kill Neri.
No.
No fucking way.
The file keeps going.
“Subject 233 displays high emotional suggestibility.
Controlled distress has yielded effective divergence patterns.
Side personalities emerge under specific conditions.
Next dose will trigger auto-response.
Observe. Record. Proceed to elimination.”
I go still.
Her fucking death sentence.
I push past the file.
Start pulling blueprints.
Facility schematics.
Access nodes.
Security rotas.
And that’s when it hits me.
This isn’t a wellness center.
It’s a fucking fortress.
Private sector clean. Government-tier containment.
Two sublevels. Reinforced stairwells.
Three separate lockdown protocols.
Pressure seals in the medical wing.
Missing cameras, dead zones. Not oversight. Intentional.
It’s not for treating patients.
It’s for burying subjects.
I find her room.
Subject 233. Level B. Room B3.
No name on the door. Just a number. Like she’s inventory.
Camera feed: Active.
I tap in.
The screen flickers—then stabilizes.
Lily.
Strapped to the fucking bed like some goddamned animal .
Head turned to the little sliver of daylight.
Hair loose. Standard hospital socks on her feet.
She’s humming.
A broken little melody that skips every few notes.
Like her voice keeps cracking.
Like even the song is scared.
I don’t breathe.
A sob breaks through and I see the tears staining her face.
Whispers something.
I kill the audio scrub. Crank the feed.
Her voice is soft.
Too soft.
“Daddy must’ve been right,” she says.
She sniffles.
“He’s not coming.”
My pulse spikes.
Chest goes tight.
She means me.
She fucking means me.
Her head dips. She hums again. Louder now.
Like if she drowns herself in noise, maybe she won’t feel the silence eating her alive.
I grip the edge of the desk.
Knuckles white.
Teeth grit.
Everything inside me folds in on itself—then lights a match.
You don’t get to make her feel like that.
You don’t get to take her faith in humanity and stomp it into the floor.
You don’t get to put her in a box and tell her she’s alone.
You don’t get to erase her.
“I’m coming, Angel—hold on.”
I pull up everything I’ll need.
Override access for lockdown cells.
Every blueprint. Every wire. Every kill zone.
I map the corridors.
Trace the path from the loading dock to the east wing.
The reinforced lab.
The isolation rooms.
And I don’t stop there.
I rip through every hidden protocol?—
Find the keys that open doors no one’s supposed to walk through.
Find the codes that shut the whole place down if they see what they shouldn’t.
I log every one.
And then?—
I open the case.
Guns. Ammo. Silent breach tools.
Things I don’t usually need.
Things I haven’t touched in years.
But this isn’t subtle.
This is personal.
I strap the first weapon to my thigh.
Second across my back.
Snaps echo in the silence—metal on leather. Memory on instinct.
The safety clicks off.
My jaw doesn’t move.
Oley sits on the desk. Watching. Tail still. Eyes sharp.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move .
Just looks at me like?—
You better bring my human home.
I give him a scratch behind the ear. A promise.
Her image flickers on the screen.
Still in that robe.
Still in those fucking slippers.
“You’re not theirs to dissect.”
I exhale once.
“You’re mine to protect.”
The mask slides down.
Tight. Familiar.
“And I’m coming to unleash hell.”
I step into the dark.