Read Chapter 14: A Confession

The crawlspace was tight enough that Élise’s shoulders scraped the rough concrete on either side. Her flashlight beam carved a narrow cone through the dark, picking out dust motes and the occasional scuttle of something small and desperate. She had been crawling for what felt like an eternity, though her watch said nine minutes. The air here was stale, underpinned by a chemical tang that clung to the back of her throat.

Ahead, the beam caught something. Not a footprint this time—a shape, crumpled and pale, wedged against the junction where the crawlspace met a service ladder leading up into the train’s undercarriage.

She shuffled closer and saw it was a lab coat. White, smeared with grime, one sleeve torn at the shoulder. A name badge was clipped to the breast pocket, still attached, the plastic scratched but legible: DR. H. ANTOINE—VIROLOGY.

Her heart hammered. She plucked the badge free, running her thumb over the embossed letters. He had been here. Whoever had built that lab, whoever had engineered those ampoules, had worn this coat. And if that was true, then the man she’d been chasing—the virologist whose luggage she’d found in the empty compartment, whose phone had pinged with that warning text—was not the victim.

He was the architect.

The implications hit her like a physical blow. Dr. Antoine hadn’t crawled into the vents to hide. He’d crawled into them to escape his own work. To escape the thing he’d unleashed on this train.

A sound from behind. A scrape of shoe on concrete, soft but unmistakable.

Élise twisted, the beam swinging wildly, and caught a figure crouched at the mouth of the crawlspace, silhouetted against the dim light of the maintenance corridor she’d left behind. For a moment, her throat closed. But the figure stepped forward, and she recognized the uniform.

Alfred.

He held a service flashlight pointed at the floor, and his face was pale, slick with sweat. “Mademoiselle Fournier.”

“Alfred.” She exhaled, relief and suspicion tangling in her chest. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you leave the car. You were gone too long. I thought—” He swallowed. “I thought you might be in trouble.”

“I was following a lead.” She held up the lab coat. “Do you know whose this is?”

His eyes flicked to the coat, and something shifted in his face. Recognition. And fear.

“I need you to tell me the truth now,” Élise said, keeping her voice low and steady. “You were disposing of the bat meat. I saw you. And I know you didn’t decide to do that on your own. Someone told you to. Someone who knew what that meat was carrying.”

Alfred’s jaw tightened. He glanced over his shoulder, back the way he’d come, as though expecting someone to materialize from the dark.

“Please,” Élise pressed. “People are dying. The mob is ready to tear this train apart. If you know something—anything—you need to tell me now.”

A long silence. The crawlspace pressed in around them, the only sounds the distant hum of the train’s systems and the drip of condensation somewhere in the dark.

“Three months ago,” Alfred said finally, his voice barely above a whisper, “I made a mistake. Not a big one. I was moving crates in Calais, off the records, for extra money. The kind of work you don’t ask questions about.”

“What kind of work?”

“Freight. Sealed crates, customs-stamped, but the stamps were fakes. I knew it. I just didn’t want to know it.” He looked down at his hands. “One of those crates was for someone on this train. A passenger who arranged to have cargo loaded into the luggage hold before we departed.”

“Dr. Antoine.”

Alfred shook his head. “The man’s name didn’t match the manifest. But he paid well. And he told me that if anything happened during the crossing—anything—I was to make sure the crate and its contents never got inspected.”

“And when people started getting sick, you followed his orders.”

“I didn’t know what was in it at first.” His voice cracked. “Not until I opened it. When the outbreaks started, I thought maybe it was spoiled. So I checked.”

“And what did you find?”

Alfred reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, plastic-wrapped bundle. He unwrapped it carefully, revealing a smear of dark fur and a crushed skull, barely larger than his fist. The bat’s wings were folded, its body mummified, desiccated. The smell was faint but unmistakable—decay wrapped in something cold and sterile.

Élise stared at it. Zoonotic. The word echoed in her mind. She had suspected it since the first symptoms appeared—the fever, the hemorrhaging, the way the virus attacked the respiratory system. Bats were the perfect reservoir. A dozen coronaviruses, filoviruses, all of them waiting in the dark.

But this bat wasn’t wild. It had been frozen, packed, deliberately transported.

“Where did the crate come from?” she asked.

“I don’t know. There was no label. Only a number.” He reached into his pocket again and produced a scrap of paper. “I wrote it down. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. That maybe I could find out.”

Élise took the paper. The number was stamped in faded ink: 77-CH-4-V.

Her mind raced. 77 for Paris. CH for a transport code. 4-V—she didn’t recognize that suffix, but the pattern was familiar. She’d seen similar codes in classified research databases before she’d been stripped of her credentials.

“This is a biological transport number,” she said slowly. “It’s used for registered samples moving between secure facilities. This crate was in the system.” She looked up at him. “Did Dr. Antoine arrange the shipment, or did he receive it?”

“Receive it.” Alfred’s voice was nearly inaudible. “He was supposed to be the one delivering it. To someone in London.”

Élise’s stomach dropped. Not the architect, then. The courier. Antoine had been transporting the engineered pathogen to a destination, and something had gone wrong. The outbreak had started before he could complete his delivery—or worse, someone had set him up.

“Where is he now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. The last time I saw him was before we left Paris. He was nervous. Kept checking his phone. He said something about a warning—that someone had tipped him off. He was going to hide until the train stopped.”

“In the vents.”

Alfred nodded. “He knew the system better than anyone on the crew. He’d walked it twice before we boarded. I think he thought he could ride it out up there.”

“And you’ve heard nothing from him since?”

“No.” Alfred looked at her, his eyes desperate. “I did what he asked because I was in debt. He paid me more than a month’s salary to move that crate and keep my mouth shut. I didn’t know what it was. I swear to you.”

Élise studied him. The man was terrified, but there was a sincerity in his trembling voice that she couldn’t dismiss. And he had come to her, not the other way around. That meant something.

“You’re the only crew member who knows the ducts,” she said. “Is that right?”

“Yes. I did the maintenance checks on them before we departed.”

“Then I need your help.” She tucked the lab coat under her arm. “Dr. Antoine is in the ventilation system somewhere. He’s been moving through it, avoiding us. But if we can find him, we can find out what he was transporting and who was waiting to receive it in London. That’s our way out of this.”

Alfred’s face flickered with doubt. “If I help you, they’ll know it was me. The ones who set this up. They’ll find me.”

“They’re already on this train, Alfred.” She met his gaze, holding it. “And they’re not going to stop until everyone who knows the truth is silenced. Hiding isn’t an option. Not for you, and not for me.”

A long moment passed. Then Alfred exhaled, a shaky breath that seemed to let go of something heavy.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll help you.”

“Good.” Élise glanced back at the crawlspace, then at the ladder leading up into the train’s belly. “Where would he go? If he wanted to avoid being seen, where would he hide?”

Alfred thought for a moment. “There’s a maintenance access point above the baggage car. It’s sealed off from the passenger areas. If he wanted to wait out the trip, that’s where I’d go.”

“Take me there.”

She turned, and together they crawled back toward the access point. But as she moved, her mind kept circling the number on the scrap of paper in her pocket.

77-CH-4-V.

Zoonotic.

And Alfred was certain Dr. Antoine had been delivering it, not creating it. Which meant that someone else onboard had engineered it. Someone who had infiltrated the train, set off the outbreak, and was now watching from the shadows as the passengers tore themselves apart.

And in the distance, she heard the muffled sounds of the public forum beginning—voices raised, Renaud’s amplified tone. Whatever he was telling them, she couldn’t stop it now. She could only hope they could find Antoine before the crowd found a new target.