Chapter 6 - The Prototype Room
The explosion did not destroy the storage facility.
It destroyed the building’s electrical intake and disabled several security systems.
That distinction mattered.
Arthur and Senator Dorsey had not arrived with enough explosives to level a military installation.
They wanted darkness.
Confusion.
A narrow window in which surveillance cameras, electronic locks, and inventory tracking could fail.
By the time we reached the secure hospital in Alexandria, Fort Belvoir had entered lockdown.
Reed left immediately.
I remained with Victoria because she had a fractured cheekbone, two cracked ribs, and signs of a concussion.
Julian stayed outside her treatment room.
He sat hunched in a plastic chair, still holding my grandfather’s cane.
“You should get checked,” I said.
“I’m fine.”
“You inhaled smoke.”
“So did you.”
“I was evaluated at the Mark Center.”
He gave me a tired glance.
“Of course you were.”
It almost sounded like the old Julian.
Almost.
I sat beside him.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “Did you hate me?”
“Yes.”
He looked surprised by my honesty.
“I hated all of you,” I continued. “It was easier than missing you.”
“I was fifteen when you left.”
“I know.”
“Dad told me you chose strangers over us.”
“I chose medical school.”
“He said you were ashamed of the family.”
“I was angry.”
“He said you didn’t want contact.”
I turned toward him.
“I wrote to you.”
Julian frowned.
“What?”
“Every month for the first year. Then on your birthday for three years.”
“I never received anything.”
“I emailed too.”
“To the address Dad controlled,” he said.
The truth passed silently between us.
Arthur had not merely cut me off.
He had maintained the separation.
Carefully.
Deliberately.
“He told me you laughed when Grandpa offered to pay your tuition,” Julian said.
“Grandpa never made that offer.”
“He said you called military service an escape from responsibility.”
“I never said that.”
Julian closed his eyes.
“I believed him.”
“You were a kid.”
“I kept believing him after I wasn’t.”
Before I could answer, a secure line rang at the nurses’ station.
The call was for me.
Reed’s voice came through.
“We located Dorsey’s vehicle at Fort Belvoir. He’s in custody.”
“And Arthur?”
“Missing.”
The storage building contained a prototype room sealed behind a mechanical security door. When power failed, the door remained locked.
Dorsey claimed Arthur entered through an old maintenance tunnel.
By the time federal officers opened the room, one Falcon communications unit had been removed.
So had a document container from the 2004 demonstration archive.
“Dorsey says Arthur forced him to cooperate,” Reed said.
“Do you believe him?”
“No.”
“What does Arthur want with the prototype?”
“To destroy it somewhere we can’t recover the components.”
“Why remove it from the base? Why not burn it there?”
“Because the prototype contains internal memory. High heat might damage it, but specialised labs could still retrieve data.”
“He needs to make it disappear completely.”
“Yes.”
“Where would he go?”
“We hoped you might know.”
I thought about my father.
Arthur trusted institutions only when he controlled them. He hated improvisation. Even his cruelty followed routines.
He would not flee without money, transportation, and leverage.
Vance Strategic Systems owned facilities across Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.
Most were monitored.
But there was one property never publicly connected to the company.
A former naval-testing warehouse on the Chesapeake Bay.
My grandfather once took us there when I was twelve. Arthur claimed it belonged to an associate.
I remembered large industrial furnaces used for stress-testing metal components.
“He’ll take it to Meridian Point,” I said.
Reed was silent.
“Where is that?”
I gave him the location.
Within minutes, a federal response team was mobilised.
Julian insisted on coming.
“No,” I said.
“You don’t get to decide.”
“He is your father.”
“He’s yours too.”
“That’s exactly why neither of us should be there.”
Julian stood.
“I know the access codes to company facilities. I know his executive security staff. And I know where he keeps the offshore emergency accounts.”
“You knew about those?”
“I processed transfers without understanding what they were.”
“Julian—”
“I can help.”
Reed arrived at the hospital forty minutes later.
He reluctantly agreed to take Julian as a cooperating witness, but ordered us to remain inside the command vehicle.
Meridian Point sat at the end of a narrow peninsula surrounded by black water and winter marshland.
The warehouse appeared abandoned from the road.
Drone imagery showed heat inside the southern structure.
Three vehicles were parked beneath camouflage netting.
One belonged to Arthur.
Federal agents established a perimeter.
Through directional microphones, they detected multiple voices.
Arthur was not alone.
At least six armed private-security contractors were inside.
One had served as head of security for Vance Strategic Systems.
Another was the man who escaped Blackthorn Farm.
Reed studied the building plans.
The prototype was likely in the furnace chamber.
If Arthur destroyed it before the team entered, we would lose the strongest physical evidence.
Julian leaned over the map.
“There’s a cooling-water intake beneath the east wall.”
“Large enough for a person?” Reed asked.
“At low tide.”
The tide was falling.
The tactical commander refused to send anyone through an unverified industrial pipe.
I understood his reasoning.
Then a live camera feed appeared.
Inside the furnace room, Arthur stood beside the Falcon unit.
He held a metal document case in one hand.
The missing authorisation.
A security contractor poured accelerant across the floor.
Arthur looked directly toward a surveillance camera.
“He knows we’re here,” Reed said.
The loudspeakers outside activated.
“Arthur Vance,” a federal negotiator announced. “Exit the building with your hands visible.”
Arthur picked up a phone.
Julian’s mobile rang.
My brother answered.
“Dad.”
Arthur’s voice came over speaker.
“I need you to listen carefully.”
“You tried to kill us.”
“I tried to save what belongs to you.”
“You left us in a fire.”
“You were supposed to walk away.”
“And when I didn’t?”
Arthur ignored the question.
“Bring Clarissa inside.”
Every agent in the command vehicle went still.
“Why?” Julian asked.
“Because she is the only person who can verify the battlefield data stored in the prototype.”
Reed muted the phone.
“He wants you as leverage.”
“Or he needs my medical-access credentials,” I said.
The Falcon system had been linked to casualty data from field medical units. Some records could only be accessed by authorised Medical Corps personnel.
Reed shook his head.
“You are not entering.”
Arthur’s voice continued faintly through the muted line.
Then a monitor flashed.
A second camera feed appeared.
Inside a smaller room, a man sat tied to a chair.
He wore a hospital gown.
Oxygen tubes ran beneath his nose.
My grandfather’s longtime aide, Sergeant Major Thomas Bell.
We had been told Bell died two months earlier.
Yet he was alive.
May you like
Arthur held the phone close to the camera.
“Bring me Clarissa,” he said, “or the last living witness to the original Falcon test dies with the evidence.”
