Under the emergency exit sign, the syringe glowed in neon blue, containing liquid that swirled like liquefied twilight. Dr. Eleanor Calloway, Chief of Biotech Research, per Sophie's scrolling frenzy through medical licenses, moved with surgical precision. The pristine ivory of her lab coat was stained with blood courtesy of Louboutins stepping on the scattered pages of Margaret's diary.
"What was mine, you took." She kicked Matthew's quaking form. "Subject 113 was our greatest success. Do you know how many children's brains we had to melt before we got controllable amnesia?"
"No way he goes back with you." Ryan interposed before Lena, knife glowing in the light.
"Oh, how lovely, Ryan. The defect is not exactly what I want." The gaze slid from Ryan's angry eyes down to Lena's abdomen. "The next iteration is what I want."
Lena felt the punch of realization: her pregnancy wasn't just a secret. It was a target.
Sophie's voice broke through their earpieces: "The tunnel at the marina! It's flooding! Demolition must've hit an aquifer!"
Saltwater poured out the vents in the cellar, twisting around their ankles. Eleanor lunged for Lena, but Matthew's restraints broke as he threw himself in between, his skeletal fingers around the doctor's throat.
"Run," he gurgled, pupils so wide from the last of his defiance.
Ryan pulled Lena toward the hidden door in the poetry section; it led to the prohibition tunnels, but the water level was already rising fast. With mounting dread, Lena watched as Eleanor's screams were swallowed by the black tide: She realized.
The tunnels were not an escape route.
They were a delivery system.
And the water was not water.
(Cliffhanger: The floodlight from a police helicopter defines the liquid's unnatural glow-Calloway Biotech's patented sedative, which turns the bookstore into a lethal aquarium.)