Chapter 25
We met Daniels at the station and hopped aboard his patrol boat.
I cast off the lines while he took the helm and fired up the twin outboards.
Joined by the medical examiner and the forensic team, the sheriff idled us out of the marina.
He brought the boat on plane once we passed the breakwater and crashed into the inky swells.
The Defender-class patrol boat sliced through the water, heading into the abyss.
The moon glowed overhead, and the stars flickered above. It was a nice night. Wind swirled briny air across the bow, and the engines howled, spitting a frothy wake.
We pulled up, and I hopped out of the patrol boat and tied off. The sheriff killed the engines and joined me with the rest of the crew.
Deputy Slater said, "You’re not gonna believe this.”
Daniels cringed.
We followed him down a lush path through dense foliage to the main building.
It was a futuristic-looking structure with clean lines, large glass windows, and a minimal design.
The lobby was clean, antiseptic, with comfy couches and chairs.
Flatscreen displays were blank now. During the day, I suspected they looped promos of the facility’s features.
Slater continued to lead us down the hallway, past patient rooms and offices.
The entourage moved past a café and a lounge area.
We stepped outside into a courtyard, which provided a tranquil escape with tall trees and greenery.
On a cool day, you could sit on one of the benches, sip coffee, or chow down on a sandwich.
We all marched across the small courtyard to the building where all the magic happened. The secure door had been propped open with a rock for easy access. By the door was a numeric keypad along with a palm scanner.
We stepped inside and followed Slater down the hallway. The building rumbled with the hum of high-tech machinery—cooling units and supercomputers.
The team marched into the heart of the operation—a temperature-controlled chamber with two dozen cryogenic stasis pods.
Forged from a composite alloy and engineered to rigid specifications, each unit stood about 8 feet tall.
A clear curved window offered a head and shoulders view of the occupant.
A screen on each unit displayed vital diagnostics—core temperature, metabolic suppression, and system integrity.
An otherworldly luminous glow enveloped the subjects as they slumbered in stasis.
A web of cables and tubes snaked from each pod, connecting them to support and monitoring systems. They looked like something out of a sci-fi movie—colonists ready to travel through space to another world.
But these patients weren’t traveling through space.
They were traveling through time, so to speak.
Solid green lights illuminated the displays of all the cryo tubes except for two. Those flashed red. Never a good sign.
We all took in the futuristic space with awe and wonder. I had never seen anything like it in real life.
“What the hell is going on here?” the sheriff grumbled.
A tall gentleman in a lab coat approached the sheriff and extended his hand. He was in his late 50s, with short white hair and a Caesar cut. He had a narrow face and a mustache and goatee. "I'm Dr. Cameron. Thanks for coming. It seems we've had a malfunction.”
"Malfunction?"
"Two of our patients are deceased," he said with a grim face, motioning to the stasis chambers that flashed red.
The sheriff stepped closer to a faulty cryo tube, and we followed.
The man inside was late 50s, early 60s, with wavy silver hair, tan skin, and a reasonably athletic build.
The portal gave a view of his head and shoulders.
The name on the display screen read Lance Wentworth.
In the cryo-chamber next to him was a woman about the same age with short wavy auburn hair. Her name was Evelyn Wentworth.