Inside, the warden’s office was tight and tense, the kind of space built for bureaucracy, not confrontation. But today it was exactly that.
Warden Shepler stood behind her desk, rigid in posture, fingers laced tightly in front of her. Dr. Rena Fields sat beside her, trying to look professional, composed—failing at both.
Ethan stood, arms crossed, jaw locked in that quiet rage that built like pressure behind steel. Brad was the opposite—still, but not calm. Focused. Calculating. His eyes never stopped moving.
Ethan started, “We’re done playing polite.”
The warden tensed.
“We know Gideon Ward spoke about Elias,” Ethan continued. “We know he was lucid at times. We know Dr. Fields was there for all of it.”
Fields opened her mouth, but Brad cut in, voice low and commanding. “No deflections. No more bureaucratic shielding. You both knew.”
Shepler blinked. “Knew what?”
Brad stepped forward, voice tightening. His eyes locked onto the warden. “That Gideon Ward had a son—Elias. That he was being moved in and out of this facility under the alias Victor Graves. We know you and his mother orchestrated it.”
Dr. Fields went pale.
Ethan leaned in. “We want every file tied to Victor Graves. The one who was Ward’s cellmate.”
Shepler looked at Fields. Fields didn’t look back.
Brad stepped between them. “Now.”
After a beat, Shepler opened a locked drawer and produced a thin folder. Inside: one photo, grainy but clear. A man—mid-twenties, lean build, sharp eyes, dressed in prison garb, standing in a prisoner’s hallway beside Gideon Ward.
Ethan froze.
Brad grabbed the photo and held it closer. “And there it is: he’s not Victor Graves,” he growled. “This is Elias Ward.”
Fields’ voice cracked. “We didn’t plan for it to happen the way it did.”
Brad snapped, voice dropping into something darker. “No, YOU planned it exactly the way it happened.”
He turned on Shepler. “You let Gideon see him. Spend time with him. Educate him. Share his cell. You allowed unauthorized contact. You smuggled Elias in and out of a federal penitentiary in your car.”
Fields looked like she might throw up. “He… he rode in my trunk. After hours. We timed it during shift changes. No cameras on the loading dock.”
Ethan’s fury ignited. “You’re telling me you let a fake prisoner, one likely working at a black site, the son of Gideon Ward, walk in and out of this place?”
“Ward begged to see him,” Shepler said, her voice cracking. “He was dying. He said if we didn’t let him say goodbye, Elias might vanish. Forever.”
“Gideon Ward was dying for what, seven years?” Ethan grumbled. “As soon as Elias turned eighteen, you facilitated his ability to walk in and out of here.” He stepped into her personal space. “Dr. Fields, there is no record of his birth, nor any life after it. Time to come clean.”
Fields shook her head.
“What was the program?” Ethan asked.
“The program was Gideon’s idea. He started it to help people with severe treatment-resistant depression—cases no one else could reach. It was government-funded, experimental, and, in the beginning... most of it failed. But there were successes. Real ones.”
She paused, voice low. “Gideon told me the higher-ups didn’t want the failures traced back to the facility. They disposed of the bodies in abandoned places or left them somewhere far enough away that no one would connect the dots. The police thought he was covering up some kind of serial crime. That he was doing it for sick reasons.”
Her hands tightened. “But he wasn’t protecting himself. He was protecting the program. He went to prison before he’d give it up.”
“And when he went to prison?” Ethan pressed.
The warden picked it up, “When Gideon was sent to prison, they handed the program over to Dr. Sybil Vance. She believedin what Gideon was trying to do—helping the unreachable, the severely depressed. But, unlike him, she was slower, more methodical. Careful. She had some success too. Not many, but enough to keep the funding alive.
