Chapter 6 - The Emergency Department
The pediatric intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital was a labyrinth of sterile white walls, muted alarms, and running nurses.
Richard Hawthorne sat on a hard vinyl chair in the waiting alcove outside Trauma Bay 4. His head was buried in his blood-encrusted hands. The bespoke white shirt was ruined, stiff with dried crimson, but he seemed entirely oblivious to his appearance. He was rocking back and forth, muttering disjointed prayers under his breath.
At the far end of the hallway, Victoria Lane paced near the vending machines. She had managed to change into a clean beige cashmere sweater and dark slacks, having stopped by her private townhouse in Palo Alto before coming to the hospital. She held a paper cup of herbal tea, her eyes darting toward the double doors of the surgical suite every time a doctor emerged.
When the elevator doors at the end of the hall chimed, Victoria looked up.
Her cup of tea slipped from her fingers, splashing hot liquid across her designer loafers.
Emerging from the elevator was Detective Briggs, accompanied by two uniformed deputies, Miller, and Emily Carter—still wearing her blood-stained navy uniform.
Richard heard the commotion and lifted his head. When he saw Emily walking toward him, flanked by law enforcement, his face twisted into an expression of raw, unadulterated agony.
“Emily?” Richard stood up, his voice cracking. “Did you... did they bring you here to confess? Why would you do this to them? They loved you! I gave you a home!”
Victoria immediately hurried over, positioning herself between Richard and the arriving group. “Detective! Thank God you brought her in. Richard has been through enough. Please take this monster down to the precinct!”
“Shut up, Victoria,” Detective Briggs said, her voice like cracking ice.
Victoria blinked, stunned. “Excuse me? Do you know who my family is? My father sits on the county judicial oversight committee!”
“I don’t care if your father is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,” Briggs said, pulling a tablet computer from her tactical bag. “Mr. Hawthorne, you need to see this. Right now.”
Briggs unlocked the tablet and held it directly in front of Richard’s face.
The screen played the high-definition video of the second-floor sitting room. Richard watched in stunned silence as Victoria appeared on the screen, slipped his grandfather's vintage Rolex into Emily’s canvas bag, smoothed the fabric, and threw the vase to the floor.
Richard’s breath hitched in his throat. He looked from the screen to Victoria.
“Victoria?” he whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of confusion and horror. “What... what is that?”
Victoria took a half-step back, her face draining of all color until she looked like a corpse. “Richard... that’s... that’s a deepfake! She used your servers to generate an AI manipulation! She’s trying to destroy us!”
“Keep watching, Mr. Hawthorne,” Briggs said grimly, tapping the screen.
The scene shifted to the secondary kitchen.
Richard watched the woman he had intended to marry pull the glass dropper bottle from her robe. He watched her coat the strawberries his children were about to eat with blue chemical fluid. He watched the small, contented smile spread across her face as she tossed the fruit with a silver spoon.
A terrible, suffocating silence descended over the hospital corridor.
Even the distant humming of the medical equipment seemed to vanish.
Richard’s eyes dilated until the pupils swallowed the green of his irises. The grief that had bowed his shoulders for the last three hours suddenly burned away, replaced by an ancient, predatory rage that made the two armed deputies instinctively step closer to him.
He looked at Victoria.
“You fed them poison,” he whispered. The volume was barely above a breath, but it carried the weight of a death sentence.
“Richard, please!” Victoria cried, retreating until her back hit the hospital wall. “I didn't mean to hurt them that badly! The chemist said it would only make them mildly ill! Just enough to prove that Emily was incompetent! Just enough to get her out of the house so we could finally be a family!”
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“You fed my children rat poison,” Richard repeated, his voice rising into a terrifying, guttural roar that echoed through the entire pediatric wing. “You tried to murder my sons!”
He lunged forward.
