Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
James Blackwell, his white coat half on, scrub pants tucked into worn sneakers, flicked his gaze from monitor to patient with rapid precision. “Vitals?” he asked without preamble.
James narrowed his eyes as the image resolved into full view.
“Spinal implants?” he announced sharply.
“It looks like some form of deep brain stimulation. DBS works by modulating the activity of neural circuits that are involved in motor control. Looks like they modified it to affect the ability to think and maintain memory.”
James scrolled through the scan with practiced fingers, zooming in on the electrode near the occipital ridge. “Cortical interfacing,” he muttered. “But it’s not reading motor function. These aren’t for movement or pain. I need more information.”
Tristan sighed. “They’re reformatting him from the inside. Slow. Controlled. Like rewriting a hard drive without wiping it first.” He scanned the monitors. “He was given some drugs, and we were given some of the antidote. We’re analyzing them now.”
Charlotte remained beside Alex, gently stroking his hair, her voice barely above a whisper. He was listening. Breathing deeper now. Her hand held his.
James glanced at her. “Whatever you were given—it pulled him out of something designed to trap his function permanently. But that doesn’t mean he’s out of danger.”
Charlotte looked up, eyes raw. “Can you get those things out of him?”
James hesitated. “Not yet. If I pull them now, I risk destabilizing everything. They’ve already interfaced with key structures—hippocampus, brain stem relay, spinal nerve bundles. If I cut those connections too early…”
“He could lose everything,” Tristan finished grimly.
“More than that. It will kill him.” James frowned.
“But you can remove them?” Charlotte gripped Alex’s hand tighter.
James stepped closer to the bed, studying the man who lay broken but breathing. “Yes. If he stabilizes, and if we can map the full spread of integration, I can remove them surgically. But we need imaging, time, and Alex to hold on a little longer.”
Tristan ordered a stat CT scan of his brain and spinal cord.
Paul looked over. “He’s got fight left. Whatever they put in him, they didn’t kill who he is. But whatever they injected into his spinal fluid, or the act of the injection itself, is causing meningitis. We’re waiting for the spinal fluid exam results. I’m leery of starting the wrong anti-infective.
“I’ve seen what prolonged neuro-implantation like this can do. They use it to treat Parkinson’s, and it may map brain function for tumor removal. In the early days, the results were disastrous. If these people tried this on others?—”
“They already have,” Charlotte cut in.
The room went still.
Tristan looked over at her. “How do you know?”
“Because Elias told me. Tristan, Paul, you’ve seen Mara.
Henry Byron. Ethan has a list of others.
” Her voice shook. “And now we know Alex was being prepped for more. Elias said if they didn’t get what the head scientist wanted from them, she didn’t ‘reset’ them.
She erased them. And if that didn’t work, they died. ”
James exhaled slowly, looking at the screen again. “This is more than reconditioning. This is identity theft on a cellular level.”
Charlotte leaned forward, whispering to Alex again. His eyes fluttered open, barely, locking onto hers. “I’m here,” she murmured. “You don’t have to fight this alone anymore.”
“I… remember you,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “I didn’t want to forget.”
“You didn’t. I’m Charlotte,” she whispered back. “You held on.”
James watched, something flickering in his expression—relief, maybe. Or awe.
“He’s still fighting,” he said quietly. “That gives us time. I need to reach out to some people.”
Tristan walked over to his brother. “Plan?”
“Get the fever down. Find the source.” James placed his gloved hands around his neck.
“Get me that scan. I need to speak to some people.” Two technicians wheeled in a BrainSense monitor and leads.
“I want to see the electricity these things are putting out. I also want to see his lab work. No decisions until I have the necessary data.”
Charlotte sat beside Alex with his hand in hers, whispering steady words into the fractured spaces of his mind. Not letting go. Not letting them win. Not again.
The room smelled like stale coffee and antiseptic.
A dry-erase board sat untouched on the wall, and a half-dead plant wilted in the corner, forgotten.
The table was cluttered with files, phones, and printouts—documents Noah had pulled together in the last three hours, half of them from systems he probably wasn’t supposed to have access to.
Ethan stood at the head of the table, arms folded, jaw tight.
Graham Cullen paced near the window, tapping the edge of a pen against his palm.
Brad sat with his elbows on the table, rubbing the tension from the back of his neck, while Noah leaned against the far wall, eyes glued to his laptop screen.
Alex was alive—for now, but they all knew the fight was stealing his strength.
“Stokes goes down first,” Ethan said finally, breaking the silence. “He had access, clearance, and motive. He played both sides—Alex nearly died because of it.”
Noah didn’t look up. “He’s smart. He didn’t leave much. But he made one mistake—he used one of the task force’s scrambled lines to reach someone inside the prison. It routed through a dead switchboard in Tulsa.”
“Let me guess,” Brad muttered, “a number in Warden Shepler’s office?”
Noah nodded. “Bounced twice, then direct. Not enough for an arrest, but enough to put pressure on her.”
Graham stopped pacing. “The warden won’t break. Not unless we put something heavy in her lap. And Fields? She lied to us. Both times.”
Noah leaned forward, jaw tightening. “Fields was covering for someone. She looked scared, not defiant. I don’t think she’s the mastermind—I think she’s stuck in the middle.”
“She’s still dangerous,” Ethan said. “She helped move Elias in and out of that facility; she’s already neck-deep.”
“We need to find the leak in Medical,” Graham added. “Somebody inside gave Monroe, or whoever’s running this, access to the schedules, to Ward’s health reports, even to Charlotte’s visitor logs. That’s how they planned the handoffs. That’s how Elias was moved in and out without raising alarms.”
Noah scratched his head. “I’ve run Elias Ward through every database I have access to. Nothing pops even with any evolution of the name.” He inhaled as he opened his laptop and typed. His brows pinched, waiting.
Brad looked at Noah. “Can we trace comms inside the prison? Something beyond the warden’s office?”
“I’ve already got a list of personnel who accessed the system on restricted hours. One name came up twice in unusual time blocks: a med tech named Pratt.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “You think he’s the leak?”
Noah shrugged. “Or a delivery boy.” He shook his head. “Son of a bitch. There it is. Eli Fields. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because we’re too close to this situation. And you’re exhausted like the rest of us. Charlotte being stalked. Mara Dwyer. The reappearance of Henry Byron. Alex. That’s a lot of worry to filter through.” Brad pressed his lips together.
The other men all agreed.
Graham crossed his arms. “Alright. We need to shake it off and put our heads down. Say we squeeze Stokes, pin the warden with the child, the visits and the communication coming through her office, and flip Pratt. Then what? We still don’t have location data on the black site.”
That was the question hanging over all of them.
No one answered right away.
Then Brad spoke. “We need to talk to Elias.”
Ethan turned toward him slowly. “You think he’ll cooperate?”
“He brought Alex back,” Brad said. “He didn’t have to. He didn’t need to. That means something. He wants to see the place burn. That means he knows where it is.”
Ethan thought for a moment, then nodded once. “We treat Elias like an asset. Carefully. Quietly. We get what we can from him and keep Charlotte as the point of contact. He trusts her.”
Noah closed his laptop. “And in the meantime?”
Ethan looked around the table. “We build a war file. Every communication, every transfer of Elias to and from the prison, and, Noah, you and I need to connect with every DC contact to find every shell company tied to black-site funding. The moment we know where it is, we go in.”
Graham cracked his knuckles. “And when we do, we don’t just pull the subjects.”
Brad’s eyes were cold. “We burn it to the ground. It cannot continue to exist.”
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. This hinges on Elias speaking with Charlotte. We’re still a long way off.