"I'll call a lawyer! I've got rights!" I screamed.

"Just shut up will you!"

His voice shook the air as he threw me into the cell. A metallic clank rippled in the hall shortly after, followed by the shallow thuds of his footsteps. The soldier was gone.

"You alright Maria?" asked Ryan, trying to shuffle over to me.

"I'm fine kid. Just stay where you are," I replied, dragging my ass to his side of the wall. With a surprising amount of womanly grace, of course.

"What, they didn't hurt you or anything?" he asked, leaning over to look at my face.

"Of course they didn't! This is the government you're talking about, not some friggin mafia-"

I stopped midway as my gaze fell on Ryan's features. A huge patch of bluish black lay bloated on his right cheek.

"Oh my God! Are you alright kid? What the fuck did those bastards do to you!" I screamed, turning towards the iron bars of our cell. "I swear once we get outside, I will sue your asses so bad-"

"Just shut up Maria!"

I flinched as his scream shook the room.

"What makes you so sure that we'll make it out of this place?" Ryan sobbed.

I shuffled back to the wall, sitting as close to him as I could without falling over. Our hands had been tied behind our backs after all.

"We'll make it out of this."

All heads turned towards the darkest corner of the room, where a man sat huddled into a ball. Rivulets of dried blood caked his once white shirt, his face covered by shadows beyond the reach of a single incandescent lamp that illuminated their prison. All they could see beyond the veil was a pair of deadly green eyes, holding a rage that could burn the world to ashes.

"Callum, just stop it," Kate whispered, never once meeting his gaze.

"Don't lose hope Katelyn. It's all going according to plan." His words were more than enough to melt her fuse.

"Plan? This was your plan!" Katelyn spat, nearly falling as she propped herself up. She stomped over to the professor, pinning him to the floor with a foot to his chest.

"I trusted you. We trusted you!" she screamed. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

"Katelyn you need to quiet down," he replied, his voice monotonous.

"No, I won't."

"Kate stop it! He's bleeding!" I hissed.

She took his foot off him, watching in horror as a fresh patch of blood slowly spread on his muddy shirt.

Cuts?

Katelyn slumped down against the wall, taking a moment to process what had happened.

It got me thinking too.

Callum Wight was a famous man, the youngest professor of Coding and Radiation the world had ever seen. While Ryan was subjected to a few punches, what Callum had to endure was nothing short of torture.

The professor huffed as he pushed himself back up against the wall. His head was bent low as he sat in the darkness.

"I want to hear your reasons," Callum spoke up, breaking the tension himself. "We've got some time to spare. I can't afford to let it go to waste," he said, turning towards Sam, "You go first."

"What the fuck are you playing at Wight," Sam replied. I had never seen his features harbour such rage.

"I know what I've done is wrong, but there was no other fucking way to do it faster. I've got a plan to take down the government and the Biocode with it. If you wanna make yourself a worthless martyr to the cause, then I'm fine with it," Callum spat, turning his gaze towards Samuel.

"Or you could fight with me." Callum's voice sheared the silence like a knife. "Talk Reyes. I know you want to tear this system apart."

After a few moments of intense glaring, Samuel gave in. He sighed, leaning onto the cell's wall.

"I used to have a family."

I could tell that it was a tale of despair that followed.

"Our thirteen-year-old son had a case of stomach cancer. My wife used to be a doctor in the John Hoppers Hospital in Baltimore, so we decided to admit him there."

My eyes went wide from horror. I jerked forward, ready to speak. Callum's glare, however, held me back. I could read the words off his deadly gaze.

Those will be the last words you ever say, his eyes said. I felt a shiver run down my spine.

"The case was, hopeless. Even her mentor told her that the best we could do was send him off with as many good memories as possible.

We had three months.

It didn't matter how much money I had."

Kate gulped. I could see the fear in her eyes. Perhaps she too knew what was coming.

"That was when the hospital was granted Government aid. My wife was one of their doctors, so naturally, she had a sample of code mutate her genes. I wish... I could've stopped her," Sam's voice slowly faded into silence.

"Samuel." Callum prodded.

"Right. Jenny became obsessed with curing our son. She removed multiple tumours by rounds of surgery. I was happy when it began. It gave me hope that our son might survive. But Nathan started developing a tolerance to the painkillers. Morphine was costly, but money didn't matter to us. It would mean nothing in a world without my son," said Sam.

His lips had begun to tremble. It wasn't easy to watch.

"When was this Sam?" asked Ryan, pulling him back from the verge of a breakdown.

"2067. It was after his seventh surgery that the third world war started. Patients started flooding in, and Morphine was no longer an option."

Samuel had reached his limit. Tears streamed down the sides of his wrinkled skin, pooling at the tip of his chin while he covered his eyes. His whimpers echoed in the silence of the cell.

"Sam," said Callum, cutting through the old man's sobs. "Don't stop there. They deserve to know," he said, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

I felt my heart wrench with anguish.

"Jenny said she could cure him, for good that time. One last push, she said."

I watched as the man grit his teeth, determined to pull through the tale of how he became the theorist he was now.

"She performed surgery on Nathan without anaesthesia," he said, his arm trembling with sadness. "I saw him after the surgery. He begged me to kill him."

No one spoke a word in reply.

"Nathan died from shock due to lack of painkillers post-surgery. Not a moment before.

I couldn't look at Jenny after that day. She never told me they had run out of anaesthetics."

I couldn't breathe. Just listening to it felt like a nightmare.

"We killed our son in the most painful way one could imagine. A week after that, Jenny jumped off the hospital's roof."

"But you weren't the kind of man to stand by and do nothing, were you?" Callum asked from the corner of the room. I could see his arms tremble with anger.

"I pulled the files of as many surgeries as I could using my connections," he answered, looking at the professor.

"And what did you find?"

"Not a single case. Not even my son's. The files of patients who came with partially curable diseases only show operational success. Not one failure in the last six years. No records of incurable diseases either."

"They were covering their tracks," Callum stated.

"A lot of the records were missing. I realized this when I expanded my search to rumours spread by the hospital's nurses. Our son's case was not an isolated incident. Countless deaths of the same pattern, with doctors going beyond their capabilities and adopting drastic measures, were occurring all over the world. In every single hospital."

"There has to be at least one case where the truth came out? Right?" asked Ryan. I could see it in his eyes. He was afraid.

"Nothing made it out through the media. Every means of spreading the truth was under Knox's thumb to begin with. There were only a few reports regarding the issue made by theorists in Verum. I believe they had been warned about the consequences," said Samuel.

"You can't be sure about that. Belief isn't enough. We need evi-"

"They died within hours of posting the content." Sam's words were more than enough to silence Kate.

"Thank you, Mr. Reyes," said Callum, his gaze now focussed on me.

"I believe you have something to say, Maria."

I sighed, looking up in an effort to hold back the tears that threatened to break my composure.

"Okay. Like I said earlier, I was dishonourably discharged from the south Milluan Police department. The reason behind it was that I got too involved in a case I was entrusted with. I got proof, solid evidence against the government regarding the Biocode used on doctors," I said.

"What did you find, Maria?" Callum asked.

"The Biocode was essentially like a switch. It controlled the drive of the person save another's life, but it was either all-in, or none at all. That was why the doctors went beyond their ability to ensure a better result, even when they knew the rate of survival would decrease significantly. The Biocode ingrained in them a lack of moderation. In an attempt to fully remove the disease, they disregarded the immune system's ability to heal a patient after a certain level of assistance from them. The result was an indefinite number of deaths. On top of all this, I found out that the data of people who died in surgical proceedings were being wiped clean."

I struggled to keep my calm.

"But it was useless. My data had been wiped clean. My office was ransacked, and the hard copies were burned the day before I intended to publish it. I never found out who did it.

I was dismissed shortly after."

If only I thought of Verum back then...

"What was the case were you investigating, Mrs. Thompson," asked Samuel.

I felt a lump form in my throat. It was hard to say it, but the time had come. I had to let go of the past.

"The suicide of Dr. Jennifer Reyes."

I watched in silence as Sam's eyes brimmed with tears once again. I had seen the truth he sought to let the world know, and I let it slip from my fingers.

His suffering was the price of my failure.

"I hope you realize why you're in Tier 1 now. I know that you aimed to eradicate Biocode because the government was too big a hurdle to cross," said Callum, leaning forward till his face came into view. "But I can promise you this. We will take down Knox. We'll tear their rule down to the very roots.

We've got the hatred of an entire world at our side.

We can do this, but under one condition," Callum paused, his eyes now directed towards the entire team.

"Give me your trust, and I'll give you the vengeance you seek."

His words lit a fire in our hearts.