Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 27
Paramedics worked on Donald while Arianna knelt beside the shattered coffee cup. His pulse remained steady but dangerously slow, and his breathing weakened with every minute. The symptoms matched no ordinary heart attack. A bitter chemical odor clung to the broken porcelain even after a guard sealed the pieces inside an evidence bag.
Hayden ordered the ambulance diverted from Donald’s usual hospital. If Martin had compromised the family’s medical network, following routine could lead them into another trap. A Scott security vehicle cleared traffic while doctors prepared a sealed intensive-care room.
Arianna rode beside her father, counting each rise of his chest. In the first life, she had missed his final hours because Derek planned a romantic trip on the same weekend. She would not let history place distance between them again. The ambulance siren seemed to divide the night into seconds she could never recover once lost.
The specialized blood test confirmed exposure to a compound related to S-47, but the hospital had no antidote. Standard cardiac medication could stabilize Donald for several hours, after which the toxin would bind permanently to heart tissue. The cloud account’s countdown had been brutally accurate. Technology from an impossible future had warned them, yet present medicine still had to fight the damage minute by minute.
Hayden contacted Scott Global’s research division, only to learn Evelyn had ordered every S-47 record destroyed that morning. The closed laboratory held the remaining sample and the formula required to reverse its effects. Its remote systems no longer answered company commands.
Police prepared a warrant, but legal approval might consume half the time Donald had left. Hayden chose to enter using his mother’s ownership stake in the subsidiary. Losing the resulting court battle meant nothing compared with losing Arianna’s father. He gave the decision without dramatizing the cost, which made its certainty more powerful.
Arianna insisted on going with him. Donald regained consciousness long enough to object, his voice barely audible beneath the oxygen mask. She held his hand and promised she would return with the antidote.
“Return for your life,” he whispered. Even while dying, he refused to become the reason she treated herself as expendable. Arianna pressed his fingers to her cheek before following Hayden.
The laboratory stood beyond an abandoned refinery, surrounded by fencing and motion sensors. Evelyn’s arrest had left automated security active and the human staff gone. Hayden used an emergency code his mother once gave him, but the entrance rejected it. Wind carried rust-colored dust across the road, erasing their tire tracks almost as quickly as they arrived.
Arianna noticed four worn digits on the keypad. Derek had relied on future dates when hiding the repair-shop records, while Evelyn favored dates from the past. Hayden entered the day his mother closed the original facility, and the steel door released.
Inside, emergency lights painted the corridors red. Filing cabinets stood open, and chemical storage units had been emptied. Martin had reached the laboratory before them. A trail of blood crossed the polished floor, disappearing toward a freight elevator marked for authorized researchers only.
They found his abandoned car in the loading bay and blood on the driver’s door. Security footage showed him entering with a small case, then running from someone the camera never captured. The case contained three empty S-47 vials.
Hayden’s chemist located the antidote formula on an isolated workstation. One ingredient required a catalyst stored in the sublevel vault. As they descended, the building announced a containment failure and sealed every exit.
Vapor hissed from vents above them. Hayden gave Arianna his respirator and covered his own mouth with his jacket. She refused until he activated a second emergency mask built into the wall cabinet. Neither of them would accept safety purchased by quietly exposing the other.
The vault held one catalyst ampule inside a refrigerated chamber. Its lock required two executive authorizations, and Evelyn’s credentials had been revoked upon arrest. Hayden used his mother’s code for the first approval, but the system demanded a living Scott director for the second. Frost coated the glass while the antidote’s final ingredient waited inches beyond their reach.
His phone rang through the laboratory network. Evelyn appeared on the monitor from a police interview room, where someone had illegally connected her to the system. She offered the second code in exchange for Hayden withdrawing the evidence against her. Even in custody, her network reached through institutions that believed locked doors could contain influence.
“Donald has less than three hours,” she said. “Choose the Taylors again, and this time everyone will see what it costs your own family.” Her cruelty confirmed she had planned for arrest as carefully as Derek planned the school fire.
Hayden rejected the deal and entered a different name into the authorization field—his own. The system denied him because Evelyn’s board action had suspended his authority. Arianna watched him try again with the identification number on his mother’s trust.
The vault clicked open. His mother had registered him as successor to her private research holdings, a right Evelyn never discovered. Hayden seized the catalyst while security warnings multiplied across the screen.
As they turned to leave, a man stepped from behind the refrigeration unit holding an empty syringe. Martin Shaw’s shirt was stained with blood, and his terrified eyes fixed on Arianna. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But Derek promised this is the only future where my daughter survives.”
