PART 9 — Behind the mirror
We pushed the door open and ducked inside immediately, pulling it shut silently behind us. The corridor we now stood in looked nothing like the sterile, white halls of the hospital above. This was an industrial, futuristic bunker. The walls were lined with sound-dampening aluminum panels, and the floor was made of cold, gray epoxy. There were no security cameras mounted on the ceiling, but rather rows of thick data cables running along the walls toward a central room further ahead.
"This is it," Van der Meer whispered, his voice tight. "Unit 4 actually exists. They built this during the major renovations back in the nineties." We crept forward on tiptoe through the hallway. Heavy glass doors lined both sides. When I peeked through the thick glass of one, the breath caught in my chest. Inside the rooms were no ordinary beds, but strange medical devices resembling pod-like capsules.
Machines filled with glowing bluish fluids and tubes connected to empty gurneys. "Where are the patients?" I asked softly. Van der Meer looked at one of the small monitors beside one of the doors. His face turned ghost-white. "They've already been moved… The transfer began earlier tonight." Anger and panic fought for dominance in my mind. For eighteen years, I had worked here.
For eighteen years, I believed I had lost my husband to a tragic accident on a construction site, while right here, not even a hundred meters beneath my feet, he was being held like a pawn in a sick game. Suddenly, we heard heavy footsteps approaching from the end of the hallway. "Quick, in here!" Van der Meer whispered, pulling me into a small storage room filled with medical supplies and spare parts.
We crouched down behind a large stack of cardboard boxes. Through a crack, we watched two men in black security uniforms walk past. They carried heavy cases. "The final transports are complete," one guard said to the other over his radio. "The main facility is being swept clean now. Leave no trace." My heart skipped a beat. Swept clean? That meant they were going to destroy everything—including any prisoners who were no longer needed.
Waiting for the guards to pass, I suddenly caught a sound coming from the room right next to our storage closet. A faint, mechanical beeping. Just like that ticking sound in the basement, but clearer. I looked at the wall of the storage room. There was a ventilation grate leading into an adjacent cell. I crawled carefully toward it, pulled out my flashlight, and shone the light through the grate.
