Chapter 7
Chapter 7: The Intercom Smile
Two days later, the nightmare fractured further. Mark’s high-priced corporate defense attorneys, undoubtedly funded by someone with deep pockets, filed an emergency motion for bail. Terrified that he would somehow walk out of custody and vanish with Sophie, I demanded to see him. Detective Miller managed to pull some strings, allowing me a brief visitation in the high-security wing of the county jail.
We sat on opposite sides of a thick, scratched plexiglass partition. Mark wore an orange jumpsuit, his hair slightly disheveled, but his eyes were entirely sharp, completely devoid of an ounce of remorse or shame. He looked at me as if I were a mild inconvenience.
He picked up the heavy plastic intercom receiver. I mirrored his movement, pressing it to my ear, my knuckles white.
"You really ruined a work of absolute genius, Clara," he said, his tone chillingly casual, like we were discussing a ruined dinner party.
"You poisoned our daughter, Mark! You used your own flesh and blood as a laboratory animal!" I spat, my voice shaking with a volatile mixture of rage and grief. I slammed my free hand against the glass. "You belong in a cage for the rest of your pathetic life!"
Mark let out a soft, mocking chuckle that sent ice through my veins. "Poisoned? Look at the data, Clara. I enhanced her. Do you have any idea what Sophie is capable of now? Her cognitive baseline, her processing speed, her pattern recognition—it's higher than any child on this planet. I cured her fear. I cured her trauma. I made her perfect."
"She is a five-year-old child, not a pharmaceutical asset!"
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Mark leaned in closer to the glass, his pupils dilating as his smile vanished, replaced by an intense, dark gravity. "You think you saved her by calling the police? You naive fool. You just opened Pandora's box. Synthex doesn't officially know about my private journals, but the global entities funding my research do. And they know exactly what Sophie's blood and genetic mapping are worth."
He leaned back, that slow, terrifyingly confident grin creeping back onto his lips. "Do you honestly think a standard police guard can stop them from retrieving their property, Clara? Enjoy your little head start."
