Chapter 2 - The Red Vial
"Give it to me!" I roared, surging upward and slamming my mother against the brick exterior of the house.
My forearm pressed into her throat. I didn't care that she was sixty-two. I didn't care that she had given birth to me. My son was choking behind me.
"Where is it, Evelyn? Where is the antidote?"
She choked out a dry, rattling laugh against my arm, her eyes watering but glittering with absolute venom. "In the trunk of my Mercedes. In an insulated steel thermos. But the lock code is sixteen digits, Mark. You don't have the time to guess it."
"Open it!"
"Not until Elena deletes that cloud server footage," she hissed, her fingernails clawing at my wrist. "Right now. From her phone and the local drive in the pantry. Every single frame."
Elena stood frozen, the 911 operator's voice crackling faintly from her speakerphone: "911, what is your emergency? Sir? Ma'am? Can you hear me?"
Toby let out a low, agonizing groan, his body arching off the stone patio in a violent seizure.
"Do it, Elena!" I screamed, my voice tearing raw. "Delete it! Delete it right now!"
Elena was crying so hard she could barely see the screen. Her thumb stabbed the security app, hitting the red Purge All Files button. "It's gone! Look! It's empty! Give him the medicine!"
Evelyn smiled. It was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen on a human face.
She reached into her blazer pocket, pulled out a heavy brass trunk key, and threw it into the swimming pool.
The brass key broke the blue surface with a clean splash, sinking straight to the ten-foot bottom.
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"Ten minutes, Mark," she whispered, smoothing her lapels. "That's how long his liver has left. You'd better swim fast."
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