Page 18 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

I watch Ethan’s face go pale. I know what’s in that storage room. Years of research and countless prototypes, the foundation of everything Synthera has been working toward.

Fourteen minutes might have been enough to destroy all of it.

“How did they get into the building in the first place?” Max demands.

Nathan leads us back upstairs, through the administrative wing, past darkened offices and empty break rooms. We stop in front of a small window, the kind you’d barely notice during the day, tucked into a corner near the supply closets.

The window has a clean circular cut in it, just large enough to reach the latch inside.

“They came in through here,” Nathan says. “Cut a hole just large enough to reach the latch. It sits in a blind spot between two of our outdoor motion sensors, so entry didn’t trigger anything.”

“And inside?” Max asks.

“They moved through freely using a cloned keycard, and that alone doesn’t flag the system. But when they reached the basement level and attached the bypass device to the storage room panel, that triggered the alarm.”

“Whose keycard was cloned?” Max’s voice is quiet.

Nathan hesitates. “We checked the access records. There’s no way to know for certain. The clone was sophisticated enough that it could have been made from any of the active keycards in the building.”

The implication hangs in the air. Anyone. It could have been anyone.

Nathan leads us to the security hub, a room full of screens and blinking lights covering every angle of the building, where his team has already pulled up the relevant footage.

We watch in silence.

The intruder appears, a dark shape dropping through the broken window with the fluid grace of someone who’s done this before. Small build. Ski mask. Dressed in black, head to foot.

They move through the building like they own it.

They don’t hesitate or take a single wrong turn, bypassing the first security checkpoint with the keycard. Left at the first junction. Right at the second. Straight to the basement stairs.

It’s like watching someone follow a map.

“How long were they in the building total?” Max asks.

“Twenty minutes,” Nathan replies. “Entry to exit.”

“And they went directly to the Clinical Wing? Didn’t try to access any other areas?”

“No, sir.”

The footage continues. We watch the intruder attach the bypass device to the control panel beside the storage room door. Seconds later, the temperature readout on a nearby monitor begins to climb as the climate control fails.

Then they’re gone. Out the same window they came in, disappearing into the night like they were never there.

“Why the hell would anyone want to do this?” The words escape before I can stop them.

Nobody answers. But I can see Max and Ethan thinking the same thing I am.

This wasn’t random. Whoever did this knew exactly which room to target and how to cause maximum damage in minimum time. The question isn’t whether they had help. It’s who gave it to them.

We reconvene in Max’s office at the far end of the executive floor. It’s a nice space during the day, lots of natural light and a clear view over the grounds. At this hour it’s mostly just shadows, lit only by the glow of a desk lamp.

Ethan crosses to the shelf and pulls the bottle from behind the books, the one we save for emergencies. He pours three glasses, hands one to me and one to Max, and sinks onto the leather couch with his own. I drop down beside him and take a long swig that burns all the way down.

Max remains standing at the window, his reflection ghostlike in the dark pane.

“It was an inside job,” I say. “It has to be.”