Chapter 14 – The Choice
00:18
"Move!" Detective Collins shouted.
Two deputies rushed Noah into the hallway while a paramedic carried him toward the tunnel.
Emma and Leo were already halfway to the exit, surrounded by officers.
Daniel, who had just reentered the underground complex after hearing the emergency call, saw the panic in Collins' face.
"What happened?"
"Bomb under the bed!"
Daniel looked toward the Red Room.
"Noah?"
"He's out!"
"Then let's go!"
Collins didn't move.
Her eyes were fixed on the device beneath the bed.
"It's not just a bomb."
The department's bomb technician slid across the floor beside the bed.
He shined a flashlight under the frame.
His expression hardened.
"Oh, no..."
"What?" Collins asked.
"It's pressure-activated."
Daniel frowned.
"What does that mean?"
"The weight on this bed is keeping the trigger from activating."
Silence filled the room.
The technician continued.
"When Noah was lifted off..."
He pointed toward the timer.
"...the countdown started."
Daniel's stomach dropped.
"So if we leave—"
"It explodes."
"And if we touch it?"
"It explodes faster."
The display blinked.
00:14
The technician reached carefully beneath the frame.
"There are two circuits."
"No..."
He swallowed.
"Three."
Collins looked toward the hallway where Noah had disappeared.
"Can you disarm it?"
"I don't know."
"How long?"
The technician stared at the wiring.
"I need at least two minutes."
"We have twelve seconds."
Daniel's flashlight swept across the room.
Something caught his eye.
A thick steel medical cabinet was bolted to the wall.
"Could we shield it?"
The technician shook his head.
"Not enough."
Daniel looked around again.
The reinforced steel door.
The heavy hospital bed.
The concrete walls.
Then he noticed something else.
Fresh scrape marks on the floor beneath the bed.
Parallel grooves leading toward a drainage channel in the corner of the room.
"They've moved this before," he said.
Collins immediately understood.
"They planned for this."
The technician looked up.
"The bed has wheels."
Daniel grabbed the frame.
"If we can't stop it..."
"We move it."
00:09
"Daniel, don't!" Collins yelled.
But he was already pushing.
The wheels resisted at first.
Then began to roll.
The bomb technician's eyes widened.
"The pressure plate is built into the bed!"
"So it moves with it?"
"Yes!"
Daniel shoved harder.
The heavy bed rolled across the room, following the grooves worn into the concrete floor.
Straight toward the drainage tunnel.
00:06
The opening was barely wide enough.
The front wheels dropped into the narrow concrete channel.
Daniel leaned his full weight against the frame.
"Help me!"
Three deputies rushed over.
Together they forced the bed into the tunnel.
The explosive disappeared into the darkness just as—
00:03
Everyone turned and ran.
The blast came a heartbeat later.
A deafening roar erupted beneath the floor.
A shockwave raced through the drainage tunnel, exploding harmlessly beneath an abandoned section of the complex.
The Red Room shook violently.
Dust filled the air.
Ceiling tiles crashed down.
But the room remained standing.
The reinforced drainage channel had done exactly what it had been designed to do.
The explosion had been redirected.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then the bomb technician let out a long breath.
"They built a blast vent."
Daniel looked at the blackened drainage tunnel.
"They expected bombs."
Collins nodded grimly.
"They expected to erase evidence."
Minutes later, every rescued child had reached the surface.
Ambulances lined the property.
Doctors examined Leo, Emma, Noah, and the five other children.
Parents who had been called from neighboring counties began arriving, some collapsing in tears as they recognized faces they hadn't seen in months—or even years.
Daniel sat on the back step of an ambulance with Leo wrapped in a blanket beside him.
Neither spoke.
Neither needed to.
Mariana arrived moments later.
The instant she saw Leo, she ran.
She dropped to her knees and pulled him into her arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
"I thought I'd never hold you again."
Leo buried his face against her shoulder.
"I knew you'd come."
Daniel looked away, tears filling his own eyes.
For the first time in ten months, his family was together again.
But Detective Collins wasn't celebrating.
A forensic analyst hurried toward her carrying a rugged laptop recovered from the surveillance room.
"Detective."
"You need to see this."
He opened a file that had survived the blast.
It wasn't a list of victims.
It wasn't financial records.
It was an employee roster.
Most of the names meant nothing.
Until Collins reached the final page.
At the top was a single title.
Program Director
Below it...
A photograph.
Collins felt the blood drain from her face.
She recognized him immediately.
Not because he had been in the cabin.
Not because he had appeared on the monitors.
But because she had worked beside him for nearly fifteen years.
Her own former supervisor.
The retired police captain who had led the original investigation into Leo's disappearance.
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And according to the timestamp...
Someone had accessed his account less than one hour earlier.
