Nico’s clue led them first to hospitals, then to private respiratory centers, then to nothing.
There were twenty-three registered treatment rooms with blue doors in the city. None had a patient named Nico Ortiz. At noon, Mara discovered why: Helix Meridian’s charitable fund had created shell patient IDs for children used in promotional campaigns. Real children, fake records, movable whenever auditors asked questions.
Lena had found the pattern before Mara did.
“She wasn’t unstable,” Elias said, standing over Mara’s kitchen table as she spread printed invoices, transit receipts, and clinic photographs across the surface. “She was building a map.”
Mara’s apartment was small, orderly, and deliberately empty of sentimental objects. Elias had noticed the framed photograph turned face down on the bookshelf but had not asked. That restraint made Mara more uneasy than curiosity would have.
At 3:17 p.m., a package arrived with no return address.
Inside was Lena’s canvas bag.
Mara pulled out a cracked inhaler, a notebook swollen from sprinkler water, and a plastic dinosaur with one missing leg. At the bottom lay a memory card, snapped in half.
Elias swore under his breath.
Mara turned the notebook pages carefully. Most were ruined, but one page remained readable. Lena had written names in columns: doctors, drivers, corporate contacts. Beside one name she had drawn a star.
DR. IVO MAREK — NIGHT TRANSFERS — OLD PLANETARIUM ANNEX.
Mara knew the place. The city’s planetarium had closed its research annex years ago after funding cuts. Helix bought the property last winter, claiming it would become a training center.
They went after sunset.
The annex crouched behind the main dome like a forgotten animal. Rain slid down its boarded windows. A security van idled near the service entrance.
Mara and Elias entered through a basement delivery hatch after Elias used a trick he claimed to have learned during cyclone relief work and Mara suspected he had learned somewhere less legal.
Inside, the air smelled of disinfectant and dust.
They found three empty treatment rooms.
Each door was painted blue.
In the fourth room, Nico Ortiz lay beneath a faded mural of constellations. A portable ventilator pushed air into his lungs. His skin was gray with fever, but his eyes were open.
“You came,” he whispered.
Mara moved toward him, then stopped. For a moment she saw not Nico but her brother Jonah at seven, asking why she had not made the doctors listen sooner.
Elias stepped past her and checked the machine. “Battery’s low.”
A sound echoed in the corridor.
Footsteps.
Mara grabbed Nico’s medical file from the counter, then saw the cabinet beside the bed. Inside were dozens of sealed devices labeled for pediatric respiratory support. Units Helix had claimed were delivered months ago.
Elias lifted one. “These could have saved him.”
“No,” Mara said, voice hardening. “They still can.”
The door opened.
Dr. Ivo Marek entered with two security guards. He was older than Mara expected, with tired eyes and a doctor’s hands. He looked at Nico, then at the device in Elias’s grip.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Marek said.
“Neither should a kidnapped child,” Mara replied.
Marek flinched. “I didn’t kidnap him. His mother brought him to me.”
“Where is she?”
The doctor’s silence was answer enough.
Elias moved in front of Nico’s bed. One guard raised a taser.
Marek said, “I tried to help. Lena came with evidence. She said Helix was selling donated units through private distributors and reporting them as charity placements. She threatened Hale. After the alarm, they took her downstairs. I never saw her again.”
Mara’s mouth went dry.
“Downstairs where?”
Marek looked toward the floor.
Before he could speak, the lights cut out.
In the dark, Nico’s ventilator beeped once, then failed.
