Chapter 15 - THE FOURTH MAN
Half an hour later, Sophia and Marcus arrived at the foundation office. Rain dripped from Marcus’s heavy trench coat as he carefully examined the mysterious photograph under the bright lamp on Mia's desk.
"Where did you get this, Mia?" Marcus asked, his tone deathly serious.
"Someone slid it under my office door half an hour ago," Mia explained, pacing nervously across the rug. "Marcus, look at the back. It mentions a fourth man—someone who was superior to Julian and Richard."
Sophia picked up the photograph, examining the scratched-out face under a magnifying glass. "Marcus, you knew my father better than anyone. Who else was involved in the early days of *Project Helix*?"
Marcus ran his hand through his grey hair, letting out a long, heavy sigh. He walked over to the glass window, looking out at the rain-soaked city skyline.
"When Arthur designed the original algorithm in 1999," Marcus recalled slowly, "he didn't have the funding to build the prototype sequence machines. He took a massive investment from a shadowy Swiss venture capital firm called *Vanderbilt Bio-Corp*."
"Vanderbilt?" Sophia repeated, her eyes narrowing. "As in Lord Victor Vanderbilt?"
"Yes," Marcus confirmed grimly. "Lord Victor Vanderbilt—one of the most powerful, reclusive billionaires in European finance. He was Arthur's primary financial backer. But six months before the crash, Arthur discovered that Vanderbilt intended to sell *Project Helix* to international biological weapons contractors."
Mia gasped. "Biological weapons?"
"The algorithm can detect genetic weaknesses," Marcus explained. "In the wrong hands, it can be inverted to create targeted biological pathogens that attack specific genetic profiles. When Arthur realized what Vanderbilt wanted to do, he cut off all contact, locked the master source code inside his private journal, and threatened to expose Vanderbilt to the United Nations."
"So Arthur didn't just refuse Julian Sterling," Sophia realized with terror. "He defied Victor Vanderbilt!"
"Julian and Richard were just Vanderbilt's local enforcers," Marcus revealed, his voice filled with grave dread. "They carried out the hit on Arthur's car to secure the patent for Vanderbilt. But when Julian failed to retrieve the master source code from Arthur's private journal, Vanderbilt went silent... waiting for the dust to settle."
"And now that we own the patent," Mia said, her voice trembling, "Vanderbilt is coming for us."
"Where is our father's private lab journal, Marcus?" Sophia asked urgently.
"Arthur gave it to me for safekeeping the night before he died," Marcus said softly. "It’s hidden inside a safety deposit box at the Central Bank of San Francisco. It contains the master encryption keys to the entire *Project Helix* source code."
Before Marcus could finish his sentence, the glass windows of the office suddenly shattered inward with a deafening CRASH!
A tear-gas canister thudded onto the hardwood floor, releasing a thick, choking cloud of white chemical smoke into the room.
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"Get down!" Marcus roared, drawing his pistol as heavy black-clad figures wearing tactical gas masks kicked open the frosted-glass office doors, submachine guns raised!
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