Chapter 185

Chapter 185

Charlotte stood up. She pulled out her phone from her pocket, opened the encrypted recording app, and played back the entire conversation to confirm it was complete.

She then sent the recording file to Felix through Barrott's military-grade encrypted channel.

Attaching the message: “Back it up immediately..

She turned to look at the server cabinet. The green indicator light was still blinking.

It couldn’t stay. Charlotte rummaged through the stocky man's toolbox and found a bottle of industrial alcohol—cleaning supplies they had prepared for wiping fingerprints from the scene.

She poured the alcohol onto the data sheets on the wall and splashed some into the server cabinet’s ventilation opening.

"You're crazy!" The stocky man shouted as he tried to stand. "There are people downstairs!"

"Then you’d better run fast,” Charlotte replied.”
She grabbed the lighter that the stocky man had dropped from the floor. The flame licked at the alcohol-soaked paper. Blue flames spread rapidly, consuming ten years of data and evidence.

She'd already photographed everything she needed.

Charlotte dragged the unconscious, tall, thin man out of the room and threw him in the hallway with the stocky one. She couldn't let him die—dead men can't be interrogated.

She turned back to close the door. Firelight was already seeping through the crack, and the smoke alarm would sound in three seconds.

Charlotte turned and rushed toward the stairs.

Two security guards who had entered through the back door on the first floor were already climbing the stairs with fire extinguishers.

Charlotte pressed against the wall's shadow and slipped out the back door. Wind and snow battered her face.

As she ran toward the motorcycle parked in the alley. As she started the engine, the wound on her left shoulder tore open, and warm fluid ran down her arm into her glove. Her phone suddenly vibrated.

It was Wayne. Charlotte answered with one hand.

"Ms. Seymour," Wayne's said, his voice trembling. The veteran who had followed Charles for years sounded almost broken now. “Your brother’s heart stopped.”

The motorcycle's front wheel hit a patch of ice and skidded.

, tilting Charlotte’s body nearly 45 degrees to the left. Her boot scraped the icy road, sending a spray of sparks. She clamped the bike’s frame with her knees and twisted the throttle fully with her right hand, refusing to ease off.”

The engine screamed as the RPMs hit the red line. Wind and snow poured into her collar, her cuffs, every gap the fabric couldn't cover. Her face went numb. the cold wind stung her eyes until tears streamed, blurring her vision into white and gray patches.

She could barely see, but that didn’t matter.

The ride from Max’s Social Club to the underground clinic had taken twelve minutes; the return took only seven.. The motorcycle wobbled and crashed into the steps at the clinic entrance, the front wheel jammed in a snowdrift at the wall’s base.. Charlotte tumbled off the bike, her knees striking the ice, sending pain from her kneecaps up her spine.

She didn't stop. The iron door was open. There was blood on the stairway railing, but she didn't know whose blood it was.

Charlotte half-rolled, half-crawled down the basement steps. Elton was kneeling beside Michael's bed, his hands stacked on the boy's flat sternum, pressing down rhythmically. His technique was textbook—each compression five to six centimeters deep, frequency 100–120 per minute.

But his face was covered in sweat. It was the expression of someone who'd done their best but knew it wasn't enough.

"How long?” Charlotte asked, rushing to the bedside.”

"Four minutes." Elton replied without looking up. "The industrial oxygen tank ran out three minutes ago. After he lost oxygen, his heart rate plummeted, then stopped."

Charlotte reached to feel Michael's carotid artery. Nothing. His skin was ice cold, his lips purple, his chest completely still.

Charlotte pushed Elton aside.

“Let me,” she said.”

She knelt on the edge of the bed, the heels of both hands stacked on the lower half of Michael's sternum. Her hands were small, but the force she generated made the bed frame shake. Her compression rhythm was faster and harder than Elton's, each downward press carrying her full body weight.

Michael's body rose and fell passively under the force of the compressions.

After pressing for a while, Charlotte stopped, pried open Michael's mouth, pinched his nose, and bent down to blow two breaths.

She saw his chest rise slightly. The air went in, but the heart didn't respond.

She continued pressing. Bones made faint sounds under her palms.

Elton stood beside her, stethoscope clutched in his hand, his lips moving slightly without making a sound.

Charlotte didn't need a stethoscope. Her palms were pressed tight against Michael's chest—any tremor wouldn't escape her sense of touch.

Her arms began to ache. The wound on her left shoulder had completely torn open. Blood seeped out from under the bandage, running down her forearm and dripping onto Michael's grayish-white skin. Red drops of blood falling on white skin.

Charlotte clenched her teeth, her jaw muscles taut as two ridges.

"Michael."

"Wake up."

"I've been looking for you for ten years."

Something seemed to jump beneath her palm.

Charlotte's froze, holding her breath, her palm pressed firmly against his sternum.

Two seconds later, a faint beat emerged—weak, as if something were trying to surface from beneath the water..

"It's beating." Elton rushed over and pressed the stethoscope to his chest, listening for five seconds. "Sinus rhythm, extremely weak, thirty-something beats per minute."

Michael's lips moved slightly. A trace of extremely faint breath leaked from his nostrils.

"He needs oxygen." Elton's voice was tight. "Right now."

Engine roars came from above the stairs. Not one vehicle, but two.

The sound of the iron door being rammed open came from overhead. Chaotic footsteps plummeted down the stairs.

The first person to appear at the basement entrance was a middle-aged man in a windbreaker, carrying two silver hard-shell cases. The labels on the cases bore red crosses and military hospital identification numbers.

The second was a young female military doctor, carrying a portable ventilator on her back, with an oxygen mask and pulse oximeter hanging from her waist.

The third was Wayne.

The fourth was Charles.

Charles stood on the final step, leaning against the wall; his forward‑leaning angle revealed how hard it was to stay upright. His face had shifted from white to a transparent gray. Snow and mud coated his trench coat.

His right hand hung at his side, the tips of his index and middle fingers blackened by severe frostbite.

"Equipment's here." The middle-aged military doctor had already opened the case, taking out the probe part of the portable X-ray machine. He glanced at Michael on the bed, then at Elton.

"How long was the cardiac arrest?"

"Just recovered."Elton replied, moving aside. "Sinus rhythm, extremely weak."

The female military doctor had already placed the ventilator mask over Michael's face. Pure medical oxygen rushed into his atrophied alveoli. The pulse oximeter clipped to to his fingertip, showed a reading slowly climbing from 68.