Rafi talks quietly with the security officer, and a moment later the main entrance fills the screen - the place Nadia would’ve walked through if she showed up for her shift.
“Alright,” Rafi says, eyes locked on the footage. “We’re looking for her coming in around her usual start time. If she made it inside but didn’t clock in - which is always the first thing she does - then whatever happened to her must’ve happened within minutes.”
Rafi, Brando, and I lean in toward the screen, every second stretching tight as we wait for her to appear. The clock ticks forward, minutes sliding past one by one - until finally, at 6:03, she walks through the automatic doors.
Head down. Bag over one shoulder. Completely alone.
She looks so small against the cold, sterile backdrop of the hospital that my chest squeezes. For a moment, she’s just pixels - just a shadow - but then the reality of it slams into me.
She made it here. She walked in. So how the hell does no one know where she is?
“She didn’t clock in,” Brando says, voice flat. He thumbs through on-screen logs on a tablet he’s holding. “No sign she spoke to anyone. Nothing on record.”
The security officer’s finger taps the screen like a metronome. “She goes down that corridor - there.” He traces a black line of pixels. “But there’s a gap in the feed. A lag. Like someone blinked the camera.”
My jaw tightens until the muscle ticks. “Tampered,” I say.
Simple. Final.
Brando folds his arms, eyes cold. “Seen going in, not seenleaving. Either she’s still inside - somewhere they can hide her - or she left by an invisible route.”
“Check every exit,” Rafi snaps. “All of them.”
“Try the emergency exits first,” Brando suggests.
The security officer brings up a split view of every emergency exit, filling the wall with feeds from all the back doors and side corridors. The room is quiet except for the low hum of the monitors as the footage rolls. Those exits hardly ever get used, so the screens stay mostly still - just empty hallways and closed doors.
Then Rafi leans forward. “Wait. Freeze that.” He taps the screen. “Back it up.”
There’s a man in a doctor’s coat on the screen. At first, he looks like any other staff member - until he moves. Too fast. Too tense. Too wrong for the setting.
He’s pushing something that definitely isn’t hospital equipment - a big, dark suitcase. It looks out of place against the bland hospital walls, almost obscene as he wheels it toward a car waiting in the staff lot. We can only see his back at first, shoulders tight, posture stiff.
Then he hauls the suitcase up, shoving it into the trunk. And when he turns - his face hits the camera dead-on.
Kanyan lets out a low, disgusted whistle. “That’s not luggage. He’s moving something… or someone.”
My vision tunnels.
“Kellerman.”
The name tears out of me like shrapnel as something inside me blows wide open.
Not a small fracture. Not a careful break. A blast that makes air rush from lungs and vision go white-hot at the edges.
A sound escapes me - primitive, animal - a roar that tears through the concrete calm of the room. It’s a threat. A promise.The sound of a man who’s been robbed of something he’s already lost once before.
Rafi’s hand lands on my shoulder, hard enough to bruise. “We’ll get her.”
I can barely feel him. My feet pace; my fists clench and unclench with useless muscle memory. My head is a furnace. The image of that suitcase rotates behind my eyes until it becomes damn near holy - an altar of everything I will burn down to pry her back.
He moved her like cargo.
He touched her.
He puther- my Nadia - into a case as if she were nothing but an object to be boxed and moved.
My vision tunnels red. I taste iron and vengeance. Mason’s voice cuts through as he walks into the room, calm but edged. “Jude.”
