Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 28
Martin blocked the vault exit with the syringe raised between shaking fingers. Blood soaked his shoulder from a wound he had bandaged badly, suggesting someone had forced him deeper into the laboratory. He looked less like a loyal conspirator than a man trapped inside a choice designed by Derek. Shame bent his posture even while desperation kept the weapon lifted.
Arianna asked what happened to his daughter. Martin said seventeen-year-old Claire would die in a highway collision eight months from now. Derek had described the location, the weather, and the final message on her phone—details no stranger could invent.
In exchange for preventing the crash, Derek demanded access to Donald’s medication and Taylor’s succession documents. Martin had obeyed until guilt drove him to hide the remaining catalyst. Evelyn’s man shot him before escaping with the S-47 vials. Every favor Derek requested had sounded temporary until Martin realized they formed a complete route to murder.
“Derek cannot guarantee another person’s future,” Arianna said. “He only knows the life that already ended.” Martin argued that knowledge was more than any doctor or parent possessed. Desperation had made a murderer’s memory resemble salvation.
Hayden kept the catalyst behind him and reminded Martin that Donald would die if they delayed. The attorney’s arm trembled harder. He had spent nineteen years protecting the Taylors and destroyed that history in less than a week.
Arianna told him about saving Jeff from North Road and changing the school fire. Neither event followed the future Derek remembered. “Help us now, and we’ll protect Claire without letting him choose who dies for her.” She offered no false promise that danger would disappear, only the shared work of confronting it honestly.
Martin lowered the syringe. Before he could step aside, the containment system initiated a purge. Steel shutters descended through the corridor while heated air rushed toward the vault.
Hayden pulled Martin beneath the first shutter and rolled through after him. Arianna slid the catalyst case across the floor, then followed with inches to spare. The ampule struck the wall but remained intact inside its insulated shell.
Martin knew a maintenance route that bypassed the sealed exits. He led them through a narrow utility tunnel while confessing that Evelyn had ordered the laboratory destroyed if anyone reached the antidote records. The purge would ignite the remaining chemicals in twelve minutes. Warning lights chased them through the passage as the metal walls grew hot beneath their hands.
They emerged beside the cooling towers, where an unmanned delivery truck blocked the access road. Its engine started remotely and accelerated toward them. Hayden pushed Arianna behind concrete barriers as the truck crashed into their vehicle and burst into flames.
The catalyst survived, but their transportation did not. A security helicopter waited five minutes away, unable to land because smoke covered the refinery. Donald’s countdown dropped below ninety minutes. The access road burned behind them, and the nearest emergency vehicle was responding from the opposite side of the industrial district.
Arianna called Emmy, who was nearby at an away volleyball match. The team bus had just passed the refinery exit. Without demanding an explanation, Emmy convinced her coach to turn around for a medical emergency.
The yellow school bus collected them beside a burning industrial complex. Students fell silent when they saw Hayden carrying the catalyst and Martin bleeding beside him. Emmy cleared the front seats and ordered everyone to stop filming. Her coach drove through two red lights after Arianna explained that the case held a dying man’s only chance.
During the drive, Martin provided the name of the cardiologist who had falsified Donald’s death certificate in the first future. The doctor currently served as a consultant at the hospital treating Donald. Hayden alerted security before the man could enter intensive care. Martin recited the details like a confession rehearsed during every mile of his betrayal.
The consultant was caught carrying a second vial intended to mimic a fatal relapse. Under questioning, he admitted Evelyn paid him through Victor’s shell company. Derek had supplied the precise time Donald would be most vulnerable. The plan contained a backup for the backup, each failure opening the door to another attempt.
Hospital chemists mixed the antidote with twenty-eight minutes remaining. Arianna watched the clear solution enter her father’s IV and waited for the monitors to change. His heart rate continued falling. No dramatic color distinguished the medicine from water, yet an entire future depended on the liquid crossing the narrow tube.
The formula required ten minutes to activate, but Donald had only minutes before irreversible damage. Hayden asked the doctors to use an experimental circulation procedure developed for industrial exposure. It carried a serious risk of stroke.
Arianna authorized it as Donald’s medical proxy. She remembered signing away his company under Derek’s pressure in the first life; now her signature gave doctors permission to fight for him. The difference lay not in the ink but in whose life the choice served. Her hand stopped shaking completely the moment the pen touched paper.
Donald’s heart stopped during the procedure. The monitor released a continuous tone as doctors began compressions, and the cloud countdown reached zero. Arianna refused to look away.
After forty-one seconds, a heartbeat returned. The black ribbon vanished from the wedding photograph, but the image did not become whole. Hayden’s figure beside Arianna began fading from the picture until only his empty suit remained.
