Chapter 4 - Celeste’s Room
Celeste Voss’s memorial room occupied the eastern corner of the sixty-sixth floor, behind a corridor rarely used by employees. Adrian had passed the door thousands of times without entering. His father created the room after the funeral and sealed it with a mechanical lock no digital system could access.
The open door revealed darkness and the faint scent of cedar.
Warren entered first with two guards. Adrian followed despite medical orders. Elara remained in the protected suite with Lila and Dr. Vale, but she gave Adrian the photograph and notebook before he left. Her trust was reluctant, almost painful.
Inside the memorial room, Celeste existed as a curated absence. Her violin rested beneath glass. Framed photographs showed charity events, sailboats, and formal dinners. A cream coat hung behind a screen as though she might return for it. Books filled one wall, arranged by height rather than subject. The room had not preserved a person. It had preserved the version of a person powerful men found convenient after her death.
Adrian’s father, Victor Voss, had controlled that version.
Victor died five years earlier without explaining why Celeste took a boat alone during a storm, why no body was recovered, or why he forbade Adrian from asking questions. The family narrative remained simple: grief, accident, tragedy.
Project Aster made simplicity impossible.
Warren’s team searched slowly. The stolen vial was not visible. No recent fingerprints appeared on the display cases, yet dust had been disturbed near Celeste’s books.
Adrian removed three volumes and found a narrow metal panel behind them. The seven-pointed star from the notebook had been etched into its surface.
The old photograph fit against the panel like a key. When Adrian aligned the star pendant in Celeste’s portrait with the etched symbol, a hidden latch released.
Inside the wall was a small analog safe.
The combination appeared in Mara’s notebook as a sequence Adrian had mistaken for laboratory measurements. The safe opened on the second attempt.
It contained no vial.
It contained twenty-one years of evidence.
Miniature data tapes. Photographs. Handwritten affidavits. Copies of medical records. A silver pendant matching the ones worn by Celeste and Mara. At the bottom lay a sealed envelope addressed to Adrian in his mother’s handwriting.
His hands trembled before he opened it.
The letter explained that Celeste had discovered Project Aster was being redirected by Victor Voss and his research partner, Dr. Elias Hart, father of Adrian’s private physician. They intended to sell covert delivery technology to governments and private clients. Celeste tried to expose them. Victor threatened to take Adrian and declare her mentally unstable.
She prepared evidence and entrusted part of it to Mara Quinn.
The letter ended abruptly. Several pages were missing.
One line remained complete: If they ever use Aster on you again, find Mara’s daughters. One of them carries what they cannot manufacture.
Adrian read the sentence twice.
Mara’s daughters.
Elara and Lila.
One of them carried something essential—possibly an immune trait, an enzyme, or a biological key to reversing the compound.
The hidden connection was not merely that their mothers worked together.
Their bodies had been made part of the same experiment.
Warren discovered a recent scrape on the back of the safe. The intruder had opened it before them and removed something. A strip of torn plastic caught beneath the hinge matched the wrapping from Elara’s vial.
The thief had brought the vial into the memorial room, opened the safe, and taken another object.
Then the thief left the vial behind a false panel beneath the violin case.
Warren recovered it intact.
Relief lasted only until Dr. Vale tested the seal.
The contents had been replaced.
The liquid inside was ordinary saline.
The true sample remained missing.
A service alarm sounded on the protected floor. Warren received a message that Lila’s heart rhythm had become unstable. Adrian ran despite the pressure in his chest.
When he reached the suite, Elara stood beside the bed while Dr. Vale adjusted medication. Lila’s body looked impossibly small beneath blankets and wires. The child had not been harmed by treatment; the compound was progressing.
Dr. Vale estimated they had hours, not days, to identify it.
Adrian showed Elara the letter.
She recognized the silver pendant from childhood. Mara once wore its twin but removed it after a man came to their apartment when Elara was nine. That night, Mara burned photographs and moved the girls across state lines.
Elara remembered the visitor’s hands more than his face. One finger bore a heavy black ring. He spoke softly, and Mara became more frightened than Elara had ever seen her.
Warren displayed photographs of Voss executives and physicians. Elara identified the ring on Dr. Lucien Hart.
Lucien arrived at the tower minutes later under escort, carrying his medical bag and demanding access to Adrian. Security detained him before he reached the elevators.
His black ring matched Elara’s memory.
Yet the tower logs showed Lucien’s vehicle remained forty blocks away during the blackout. He could not have taken the vial personally.
Lucien denied knowledge of Project Aster and claimed his father’s research was therapeutic. He admitted visiting Mara years earlier but said he was trying to protect her from Victor Voss. His calmness resembled Adrian’s own under pressure, which made it harder to read.
A search of Lucien’s bag revealed sealed medication, all properly labeled. Hidden beneath the lining, however, was a second phone.
The phone contained one recent message.
The girl arrived. Begin the final transfer.
The sender was saved under a single initial: J.
May you like
Julian Voss’s plane from Washington had landed twenty minutes earlier.
He was already inside the tower.
