Read Chapter 18: The Last Call

The emergency phone felt warm in Élise’s palm, almost alive. Marcel had handed it over like a grenade with the pin pulled, and now she stared at the single contact glowing on the screen: a string of numbers and letters that matched everything else on this train—77-CH-4-V.

She pressed call.

The line clicked open. Static hissed. And then, impossibly, a voice—tinny, distant, but unmistakably human.

“Fournier?”

Her breath caught. “Dr. Leclair?”

“Where are you? Your clearance vanished two days ago. I’ve been—” The signal fractured, words breaking into shards of consonants. “—the data you sent. The coagulation markers. That’s not—”

“I know. It’s not natural.” She pressed the phone harder against her ear, moving deeper into the maintenance alcove where Marcel had left her. “It’s engineered. I’ve seen the lab. The vials. Someone brought it onboard deliberately.”

“—can’t hear you. The signal—” More static. “—France Nationale frequency. Who’s jamming—?”

The line died.

Élise redialed. Nothing. She checked the display—full bars, one contact, no service. She tried again, holding the phone above her head, moving toward the door of the alcove, stretching toward the corridor as if distance could matter.

Dead.

She stepped out into the carriage. The phone’s signal indicator flickered—one bar, two—and she tried the call again. This time, the dial tone rang. Once. Twice.

Then silence. Perfect, absolute silence, as if something had swallowed the sound whole.

“Looking for a way out?”

She spun. Renaud stood in the corridor behind her, arms crossed, face unreadable. He looked almost amused.

“I’m trying to reach my former mentor,” she said, keeping her voice level. “To describe the hemorrhagic presentation. It may not match any known—”

“It won’t.” He stepped closer. “Because nothing is getting out of this train. Not your voice. Not your data. Not even a whisper.”

Élise lowered the phone. “What do you mean?”

“The Chunnel is a Faraday cage.” He said it simply, as if explaining the weather. “Reinforced concrete. Steel lining. The engineers didn’t plan it that way—it’s just how the tunnel was built. But someone, somewhere, decided that was convenient for our purposes.”

“Our purposes.”

“The operation’s purposes.” He studied her face. “You didn’t know. Of course you didn’t. You’ve been scrabbling around in the dark, thinking you could call for help, thinking there was a cavalry waiting on the other end.”

Élise’s hand tightened around the phone. “You told me rescue was coming.”

“I told you what you needed to believe to keep working.” He tilted his head. “You’ve done excellent work, Dr. Fournier. The quarantine protocols. The triage systems. Even the morale management—impressive, given your history. But you need to understand something now, plainly.”

He stepped closer still, close enough that she could smell stale coffee on his breath.

“There is no rescue. There is no signal. There is no outside world reaching us, and no inside world leaving us. This train is a sealed system. We are completely, utterly alone.”

The words landed like physical blows.

“The satellite phone,” she said. “The one on the agent’s body. It had the same code.”

“Decoy.” He smiled thinly. “A prop. When you found it, you made assumptions—that I was overseeing the operation, that there were controllers beyond the tunnel. But the only controller on this train is me. And the only person who can save these people is you.”

“And Antoine.”

“And Antoine,” he agreed. “Who has the serum. Who is somewhere in the ventilation system, bleeding out or hiding or dead. We don’t know. We can’t know. We can only send you in after him.”

Élise’s mind raced, recalibrating everything she thought she understood. The satellite phone had been planted. The code had been a breadcrumb. Renaud had wanted her to connect the dots—had wanted her to believe in a larger conspiracy when the smaller one was sitting right in front of her.

“Why reveal this now?”

“Because the forum is about to begin.” He checked his watch. “In about twelve minutes, I’ll address the passengers. I’ll tell them the truth—that there’s been a medical emergency, that we’re working on containment, that help is on the way.”

“You just told me help isn’t coming.”

“Help isn’t. Hope is.” He shrugged. “They don’t need to know the difference. They need to stay calm. They need to stay in their carriages. And you need to find Antoine before the virus mutates further.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then the next time someone dies of hemorrhagic fever—and it will be soon, based on the progression I’m seeing—I’ll announce that you were brought on as a consultant and failed to prevent it. That you knew the risks and took the job anyway.” His eyes were flat. “You’ll never work again. In any capacity. I’ll make sure of it.”

Élise stared at him. Every instinct screamed that he was still lying, that there was another layer to this deception, another trap waiting. But she couldn’t see it. Couldn’t find the seam.

“You have no idea what the virus is doing out there,” she said. “You’re asking me to walk into a ventilation shaft with no backup, no weapons, no communication, to find a man who may already be dead—while you stand here and play politics with terrified civilians.”

“I’m asking you to do exactly what you promised.” He met her gaze. “You agreed to head the quarantine effort. You agreed to find Antoine. You shook my hand and told me you didn’t trust a word I said, and you agreed anyway. Why?”

Because she didn’t have a choice. Because trust wasn’t the currency here—survival was.

“Because the alternative is letting everyone die,” she said. “Including me.”

Renaud nodded slowly. “Then we understand each other.”

He turned and walked back toward the first-class lounge, where the muffled sound of voices was beginning to rise. The forum was about to begin.

Élise stood alone in the corridor, the dead phone still in her hand.

She thought about Leclair’s voice, fractured and distant, before the signal had died. He’d said something about coagulation markers. Something about data she’d sent. But she hadn’t sent any data—she hadn’t had the chance. Which meant he was seeing something else. Something that had reached him through another channel.

Her own research. The papers that had been stolen from her luggage.

She looked down at the phone. The single contact glowed up at her: 77-CH-4-V. The same code on the ampoule. The same code on the satellite phone. The same code on Marcel’s emergency line.

One code. One identifier. One operation.

But Renaud had claimed the satellite phone was a decoy. A prop meant to mislead her.

What if it wasn’t?

What if Renaud was the one who’d been misled?

She pocketed the phone and walked toward the lounge. The forum was about to begin, and she had a choice to make: confront Renaud publicly and risk everything, or let him speak and bide her time.

But as she moved through the carriage, past the pale faces and the whispered questions, she realized she was done waiting.

The phone was dead. The tunnel was sealed. The virus was mutating faster than any known progression.

And somewhere in the labyrinth of vents above their heads, Dr. Antoine was running with the only serum that could save them all.

Renaud wanted her to find him.

But Élise was beginning to think that Renaud didn’t want Antoine found for the reasons he claimed.

She stopped at the door to the lounge and watched him take the stage, watched him raise his hands for silence, watched the passengers lean in like flowers toward the sun.

He was good at this. Too good.

And Élise had just realized that if the Faraday cage had been planned, if the satellite phone had been planted, if every breadcrumb had been laid in advance—then she wasn’t uncovering a conspiracy.

She was walking through one.

The question was whether she was the intended destination.

Or the victim.

She stepped through the door and took a seat in the back row, her eyes fixed on Renaud, her hand resting on the dead phone in her pocket.

Somewhere above them, in the dark of the ventilation shaft, she heard a faint scraping sound.

Not metal on metal.

Footsteps.

Someone was still moving.