Chapter 6 The Final Gamble

Darkness had fallen by the time we approached Meridian's facility again. This time, I came prepared—dark clothing, a lockpick set, and a small revolver tucked into my waistband. Most importantly, I had Gabriel, his spectral form now fully restored after a day of rest.

"Security is heavier than last night," he reported after scouting ahead. "Four guards at the main entrance, two patrolling the perimeter."

"What about the loading dock?"

"One guard, but he's alert. Not like last night."

I frowned, considering our options. "Any other way in?"

Gabriel's expression turned thoughtful. "There's a basement entrance, appears to be for maintenance. One lock, no visible guards."

"Perfect."

We moved silently through the shadows, keeping to the edges of the property. The maintenance entrance was exactly as Gabriel described—a steel door set into the foundation, partially obscured by overgrown bushes.

The lock yielded to my picks after a minute of careful manipulation. Inside, the basement was dimly lit by emergency lights, filled with humming machinery and the smell of chemicals.

"The children are still on the third floor," Gabriel said. "But there's something else you should know. Westbrook is here, and he's... different."

"Different how?"

"Agitated. Frightened. He keeps clutching at his chest where I..." Gabriel trailed off, looking troubled. "He's ordered the accelerated transfer of all test subjects to a secondary facility. It's happening tonight."

Urgency surged through me. "Then we need to hurry."

We navigated through the basement, finding a service elevator that would attract less attention than the stairs. As we ascended, Gabriel phased through the ceiling to scout each floor before I arrived.

"Second floor is clear," he reported when I reached that level. "But the third is heavily guarded. They're moving children now, sedated on gurneys."

"We need a distraction," I whispered.

"Leave that to me," Gabriel said with grim determination. "When the guards move, head straight for the children's ward."

Before I could ask what he planned, he disappeared through the ceiling. Moments later, alarms blared from the opposite end of the building, followed by shouts and running footsteps.

I slipped out of the elevator and hurried toward the children's ward. As Gabriel had predicted, most of the guards had rushed toward the disturbance, leaving only one man outside the ward doors. He was young and nervous, eyes darting toward the commotion.

I raised my revolver and stepped into view. "Don't move."

The guard froze, then slowly raised his hands.

"Open the door," I commanded. "Slowly."

He complied, using a key card to unlock the ward. Inside, only three children remained, the others apparently already transferred. They lay on beds, connected to IVs that kept them sedated.

"Step inside," I told the guard. "Face the wall."

Once he was positioned safely away from the door or any alarm buttons, I quickly checked the children. Two boys and a girl, none older than ten. My heart clenched at their pallor, the tiny puncture marks visible on their arms from repeated injections.

"What have they been given?" I demanded of the guard.

"Just sedatives," he answered shakily. "For transport."

"How do I wake them up?"

"You can't. Not until it wears off."

I couldn't carry all three children, and they couldn't walk. The impossibility of my rescue plan hit me with crushing force.

Gabriel appeared suddenly, passing through the wall. "Viv, we have a problem. Westbrook knows you're here. He's coming with armed men."

"I can't move the children," I said desperately. "They're sedated."

Gabriel's expression hardened with determination. "There's a laundry cart in the hallway. You could fit them all if they're small enough."

I rushed to the door and peered out. Sure enough, a large canvas laundry cart stood abandoned in the corridor. I dragged it into the ward, ignoring the guard's protests.

"Help me lift them," I ordered him, keeping my gun visible.

Reluctantly, he helped transfer the children to the cart, their small bodies limp and unnaturally still. Once all three were loaded, I faced a new problem—how to maneuver the heavy cart while keeping the guard covered and staying alert for Westbrook's men.

"I'll need to tie you up," I told the guard, finding a roll of medical tape on a nearby cart.

After securing him to a bed frame, I turned to the laundry cart, heart sinking at its weight. Even empty, it would have been difficult to push quickly. Loaded with three children, it seemed impossible.

"Gabriel," I whispered, "I don't think I can—"

"Behind you!" he shouted suddenly.

I whirled to find Dr. Westbrook in the doorway, a syringe in his hand and triumph in his eyes.

"Miss Grey," he said smoothly. "How persistent you are. Like a particularly stubborn infection."

I raised my gun, but my hand was shaking. "Stay back."

"Or what? You'll shoot me? In a room full of children?" He stepped forward confidently. "I think not. You're too... principled."

Gabriel moved to stand between us, his spectral form rippling with fury. "I can stop his heart again," he growled. "Just give me the word."

But Westbrook kept advancing, unaware of the ghostly threat. "Do you know what's in this syringe, Miss Grey? Our latest formulation of Project Lethe. It creates a highly suggestible state while simultaneously erasing specific memories." His smile was clinical, detached. "After one dose, you'll be ready to confess to fabricating your entire story about Meridian. You'll believe it, too."

I backed up until I hit the laundry cart, my gun still trained on him. "The Guild won't get away with this. Others know what you've done."

"The Guild?" Westbrook laughed. "Is that what Lewis told you? A dramatic name for a simple business arrangement between powerful men. There's nothing mysterious about it—just money and influence."

From the corridor came the sound of approaching footsteps—his backup arriving.

"Your options have run out," Westbrook said, raising the syringe. "Don't worry. The procedure is relatively painless."

In that moment, several things happened simultaneously. Gabriel surged forward, passing through Westbrook's chest as he had before. The doctor gasped, clutching at his heart and dropping the syringe. And a sudden, violent hallucination overtook me—the room spinning, walls melting, invisible hands clutching at my throat.

I struggled to breathe, to focus, realizing dimly that I must have been exposed to something—airborne drugs, perhaps, or something in the room's ventilation.

Through my distorted vision, I saw Westbrook recover, bending to retrieve the syringe while Gabriel frantically tried to stop him, his ghostly hands passing uselessly through the doctor's arm.

"Viv!" Gabriel's voice sounded distant, underwater. "Listen to me. It's not real. Whatever you're seeing, it's not real!"

I gripped the edge of the laundry cart, trying to anchor myself to reality as the hallucinations intensified. Shadows peeled themselves from the walls, reaching for me with clawed hands. The children in the cart transformed into grotesque dolls, then back to children.

"Focus on my voice," Gabriel urged. "You need to move, now!"

With tremendous effort, I pushed the cart toward the door, colliding with Westbrook and knocking him sideways. The syringe flew from his hand, shattering against the wall.

"Stop her!" he shouted to someone in the hallway.

Through my drugged haze, I saw armed men appear in the doorway. There was no escape that way. Desperately, I looked around for another exit and spotted a service door at the back of the ward.

"There!" Gabriel pointed, seeming to read my thoughts. "That leads to a back stairwell!"

I changed direction, pushing the heavy cart with strength born of desperation. The armed men fired, bullets whizzing past my head as I crashed through the service door and onto a narrow landing.

The stairs were steep, the cart unwieldy. There was no way to safely descend with the children inside.

"I can't—" I gasped, the hallucinations making it impossible to think clearly.

"You have to," Gabriel insisted, his form flickering before me. "I know you're seeing things, Viv, but you need to push through it. Those children will die if you don't."

Summoning every ounce of strength, I maneuvered the cart to the stairs and began a controlled descent, one step at a time, using my body as a brake to prevent it from careening down uncontrolled.

Halfway down, the door above us burst open. Westbrook appeared, face contorted with rage. "Shoot her!" he ordered the men behind him.

But the narrow stairwell made it difficult for them to aim without risking hitting the children. I continued downward, each step an agony of effort and fear, the hallucinations blurring reality until I could barely distinguish up from down.

Finally reaching the bottom, I pushed through another door into what appeared to be a loading area different from the one we'd seen before. A single truck was backed up to the platform, engine running—presumably for transporting the children to the secondary facility.

A driver sat behind the wheel, startled by my sudden appearance. Before he could react, I raised my gun.

"Out," I commanded, my voice hoarse. "Now."

He complied, raising his hands and stepping away from the vehicle. With his help—reluctant but compelled by the gun—I loaded the children into the truck's cargo area, then climbed into the driver's seat.

Gabriel appeared beside me. "Can you drive in this condition?"

"Do I have a choice?" I asked, gripping the wheel as the world tilted and swayed around me. Shadows still danced at the edges of my vision, threatening to overwhelm me.

"Focus on something concrete," he advised. "My voice. The feel of the wheel. Anything real."

I turned the truck around and accelerated toward the exit gate, crashing through the wooden barrier as guards scattered. Behind us, I could hear shouting and the report of gunfire, but we were already speeding into the night.

"Where do we go?" I asked Gabriel, fighting to maintain consciousness as the drug's effects intensified. "Can't take them to police... Meridian has influence..."

"The Tribune," Gabriel decided. "Finch will know what to do. And the press coverage will protect the children."

I nodded, struggling to keep the truck on the road as buildings and streetlights blurred together in a kaleidoscope of light and shadow. More than once, Gabriel's voice pulled me back from the brink of unconsciousness, urging me to stay awake, to keep driving.

"Almost there," he encouraged as the Tribune's building came into view. "Just a little further, Viv."

The truck screeched to a halt outside the newspaper offices. Somehow, I made it inside, babbling about children and evidence to the startled night watchman. He recognized me—or rather, recognized that I matched the photograph of the supposedly dead reporter—and called for Finch.

What followed was a blur of activity. Finch arriving, pale-faced and determined. Medical personnel summoned to care for the children. Police—trusted officers Finch knew personally—taking statements and securing the area.

Through it all, Gabriel remained at my side, his spectral presence a constant comfort even as the hallucinations slowly began to fade.

"The children?" I asked repeatedly, until someone finally answered.

"They're safe," Finch assured me. "Coming out of sedation slowly. A doctor's with them."

Relief washed over me. "And Westbrook? The Guild?"

"The police have surrounded Meridian's facility," he said grimly. "But Westbrook and several others escaped. They're hunting them now."

I nodded, exhaustion threatening to overwhelm me. A doctor had given me something to counteract the hallucinogen, but warned it would take hours to fully clear my system.

In a quiet moment, as dawn broke outside the windows, I found myself alone with Gabriel in Finch's office.

"You did it," he said softly, pride evident in his voice. "You saved those children."

"We saved them," I corrected. "I couldn't have done it without you."

His spectral hand reached toward my face, hovering just above my cheek in a gesture that had become familiar—the closest thing to a caress he could offer.

"When I saw you struggling with those hallucinations," he said quietly, "I've never felt so helpless. Not even when I died."

"I heard your voice through it all," I told him. "It kept me anchored when nothing else could."

Something shifted in his expression then, a realization or decision that softened his features. "Viv, there's something I need to tell you. About why I've remained here, why I'm tethered to you specifically."

Before he could continue, the office door opened. A small boy stood there, one of the children we'd rescued. He was perhaps eight years old, thin and pale but alert, his eyes scanning the room curiously.

"Hello," I said gently. "Are you feeling better?"

He nodded, then pointed directly at Gabriel's ghostly form. "I can see him too," he said simply.

Gabriel and I exchanged startled glances.

"You can see me?" Gabriel asked, moving closer to the child.

Another nod. "There are lots of ghosts at the bad place. Some of them were kids like me."

My heart clenched. "Did they... hurt you at the bad place?"

"They gave me medicine that made me see things that weren't there. And sometimes they made me forget things." His small face grew serious. "But I remembered again. I always remember eventually."

I reached into my bag and found a tube of lipstick—an odd thing to carry after everything we'd been through, but there it was. On impulse, I knelt before the boy.

"May I?" I asked, showing him the lipstick.

When he nodded, I gently drew a symbol on his forehead—a protective sigil my grandmother had taught me long ago, when my abilities first manifested. I didn't know if it held any real power, but it felt right in that moment.

"This is for protection," I told him. "So the bad dreams can't find you."

The boy touched the mark curiously, then looked at Gabriel again. "Is he protecting you?"

"Yes," I said softly. "He is."

Gabriel moved closer, his expression tender as he gazed at the child. Then, to my astonishment, he seemed to flicker and change—his form becoming temporarily solid, more substantial than I'd ever seen it.

Before I could process what was happening, he knelt beside me and reached out—actually touching the boy's shoulder. The child's eyes widened, but he didn't pull away.

For a brief moment, Gabriel appeared almost alive again, his spectral glow replaced by solid flesh. Then, just as quickly, he returned to his transparent state, the effort clearly draining him tremendously.

"How did you do that?" I whispered when the boy had been led away by a nurse.

"I don't know," Gabriel admitted, his form noticeably fainter. "I just... needed to."

Finch burst into the office, excitement radiating from him. "The story's hitting the streets now. Special edition. And the wire services have picked it up—it'll be nationwide by noon."

He slapped a newspaper onto the desk. The headline screamed: "CHILDREN RESCUED FROM ILLEGAL EXPERIMENTS: Tribune Reporter Exposes Meridian Pharmaceutical Atrocities."

Below was a photograph of the three rescued children, their faces blurred for protection, and a smaller picture of me—very much alive, refuting the suicide claims.

"It's over," Finch declared. "The police have warrants out for Westbrook and the entire Meridian board. The Guild—whatever it is—is finished."

I should have felt triumphant. Instead, exhaustion washed over me in a wave so powerful I could barely stand. Gabriel moved closer, concern etched on his spectral features.

"She needs rest," he told Finch, though of course my editor couldn't hear him.

As if reading my mind—or perhaps just recognizing obvious exhaustion—Finch nodded. "There's a hotel room booked for you under a false name. Police protection outside the door. Get some sleep, Grey. You've earned it."

At the hotel, with the door locked and curtains drawn, I finally allowed myself to collapse onto the bed. Gabriel hovered nearby, his form still weakened from his mysterious manifestation earlier.

"It's not really over, is it?" I asked softly. "Westbrook is still out there. And others like him."

"But you've exposed them," Gabriel reminded me. "Taken away their secrecy. That's no small victory."

I nodded, too tired to argue. "Will you stay? While I sleep?"

"Always," he promised.

As consciousness faded, I heard him whisper something that followed me into dreams: "My obsession was never about solving cases. It was about you, Viv. It's always been you."

In my dreams, I danced with a man whose hands I could feel, whose heartbeat matched my own. And for those few hours of sleep, the impossible seemed within reach.