CHAPTER 6: PROJECT LANTERN
Emergency lights flashed along the restaurant walls.
Employees directed customers toward the exits while Elena reached for Maya’s hand.
“Stay beside me.”
Smoke had not entered the dining room, but the alarm continued to sound. Outside, several cars had stopped beneath the restaurant’s awning.
One of them was a black sedan with no license plate.
Maya saw it pull away the moment she stepped onto the sidewalk.
Detective Aaron Cole arrived twelve minutes later.
The restaurant had not caught fire. Someone had activated the alarm manually from a service corridor and cut power to the building.
Security footage showed a man in a maintenance uniform entering through the rear door.
His face remained hidden beneath a cap.
Cole photographed the black envelope and the picture of Charles Whitmore.
“You think the power failure was meant to frighten you?” he asked.
“Or distract me,” Maya replied.
She called Priya again.
The intrusion into Aster Health Technologies had ended at the exact moment the restaurant alarm was triggered.
Someone had wanted Maya away from her phone and unable to authorize an emergency shutdown.
By the time she reached the company’s Boston office, Priya and the cybersecurity team had isolated the development network.
Project Lantern was still encrypted.
However, the intruder had accessed another file—a proprietary scheduling engine used by emergency departments to calculate staffing levels.
Nothing appeared to have been copied.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Priya said. “Why break into the system and leave without taking anything?”
“To change something,” Maya answered.
The team began comparing the active code against secure backups.
Three hours later, they found seventeen altered lines.
The changes were almost invisible.
Under ordinary conditions, the software would operate normally. But if activated remotely, the altered code could produce false staff shortages across every connected hospital.
Emergency rooms would appear dangerously understaffed.
Ambulances would be redirected.
Surgeries could be delayed.
Aster would be blamed for the failure.
Priya stared at the screen.
“This isn’t theft.”
“It’s sabotage,” Maya said.
Elena stood near the conference table with Marcus Reed, her longtime attorney.
“Why would Gregory create an encrypted file connected to this?”
Maya called him.
His number went directly to voicemail.
Marcus tried his office.
No answer.
Detective Cole sent officers to Gregory’s apartment.
He was not there.
His car remained in the garage, but his laptop and several boxes of legal records were missing.
The only unusual item inside the apartment was a photograph of Thomas Mercer taped above Gregory’s desk.
On the back, someone had written:
He died because he opened the wrong account.
Cole notified federal investigators.
Meanwhile, Maya’s board gathered for an emergency meeting.
Dr. Owen Pierce, the newly appointed board chairman, joined by video from North Atlantic Memorial Hospital.
“We need to inform Charles Whitmore,” Pierce said. “His hospitals are testing our software next week.”
“Not yet,” Maya replied.
“He controls the largest hospital network in the region.”
“And he appears in a photograph with two convicted criminals.”
Pierce’s expression hardened.
“A fifteen-year-old charity photograph proves nothing.”
“It proves he knew Rebecca.”
“So did hundreds of people.”
Maya placed the black envelope on the table.
“Someone sent this to me tonight. Minutes later, my company was attacked.”
Pierce read the message.
For the first time, his confidence seemed to weaken.
But only for a moment.
“You’re allowing your personal history to influence a business decision,” he said.
“My personal history taught me what happens when I ignore warning signs.”
The board voted to postpone the North Atlantic software test.
Pierce cast the only opposing vote.
At four in the morning, Priya finally broke through one layer of Project Lantern’s encryption.
A list of numbers appeared on the screen.
They were not bank accounts.
They were dates.
Each date corresponded to a major hospital acquisition completed by Charles Whitmore.
Beside every date was the name of a shell company.
One appeared repeatedly.
Meridian Strategies.
Maya recognized it immediately.
Meridian Strategies was the holding company Rebecca and David had planned to use to steal control of Aster.
Gregory had claimed Rebecca owned it.
Corporate records told a different story.
Its controlling shareholder was hidden behind an overseas trust.
Priya traced the trust through three jurisdictions.
The final beneficiary was Charles Whitmore.
Maya leaned back from the screen.
Rebecca and David had never been the true owners of the company they planned to use against her.
They had been working for someone else.
Priya opened the next encrypted section.
A live countdown appeared.
Eleven hours.
Forty-three minutes.
“What happens when it reaches zero?” Elena asked.
Priya checked the code.
Her face lost its color.
“It activates the altered software.”
“Across our test hospitals?”
Priya shook her head.
May you like
“Across every hospital currently using an Aster platform.”
There were forty-six of them.
