Chapter 228: Chapter 228: Underground Operating Room

Lying on the floor, Ms. Archer saw Melody Summers heading for the basement and immediately began to struggle violently.

Unable to lift her body, she could only slam her head against the floor—THUD! THUD!—as if she felt no pain at all.

Melody Summers frowned. She walked over to Ms. Archer and used more layers of tape to firmly secure her neck and ankles to the floor. Now, Ms. Archer was like a pinned human specimen; no matter how much she twisted and struggled, she couldn’t make the slightest movement.

After double-checking that Ms. Archer was completely immobilized, Melody Summers turned back to the basement entrance. She switched on her phone’s flashlight and cautiously descended the narrow staircase, one step at a time.

Melody Summers had assumed the basement would be a small, cramped area, but after the narrow staircase, she found herself in a massive underground space.

It was like an underground shopping street. The basement corridor was long and wide, and in the beam of her phone’s light, it seemed to stretch on endlessly.

Both sides of the corridor were lined with rooms resembling factory cubicles, arranged in neat rows. All their doors were shut tight.

Melody Summers checked the doors until she found one that wasn’t locked. After confirming no one was inside, she gently pushed it open.

The moment the door swung open, Melody Summers expected to be hit with a musty, rotting smell, but that wasn’t what she found.

A smell like a cleaning agent washed over her, mingled with the faint scent of disinfectant. ’Looks like this place was cleaned and disinfected recently,’ Melody thought.

In the beam of her phone’s flashlight, Melody Summers immediately spotted an empty operating table in the center of the room. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

A jolt of shock went through Melody Summers. ’It looks like this is an underground medical facility...’

’Could it be...’

’Could the organ harvesting surgeries Flynn Adler mentioned be secretly taking place right here?!’

Suppressing her astonishment, Melody Summers stepped inside and carefully surveyed the room.

Beside the operating table stood several pieces of medical equipment she didn’t recognize. They looked quite new, clearly not abandoned.

In addition, there was a cabinet against the wall.

Melody Summers took a few steps forward, gently opened the cabinet door, and found medications neatly arranged inside.

She picked up a box and read the label: "Propofol." She was taken aback. ’An anesthetic!’

’Anesthetics are incredibly hard to come by. Hospitals guard them strictly; I couldn’t get my hands on any when I was stockpiling supplies.’

After a moment’s thought, Melody Summers decided to take all the medicine from the cabinet and store it in her space.

She turned to the medical equipment, hesitated for a few seconds, and then swept it all—including the operating table—into her space.

’Melody Summers wasn’t sure what the later stages of the apocalypse would bring. It was better to be safe than sorry with these medical supplies.’

Once she was sure she had completely cleared the room, Melody Summers walked out, closing the door behind her.

She then checked the other rooms nearby and found they were all locked from the outside.

Melody hesitated for a moment, then walked up to one of the locked rooms and absorbed the entire door, frame and all, into her space.

With the door gone, Melody Summers walked straight inside. She scanned her surroundings and saw that this room only contained several refrigerated cabinets and no other medical equipment. However, the power to the cabinets was out.

She approached one of the cabinets and pulled the door open. A foul stench immediately assaulted her.

The reek was like food waste left to rot for a week—a mixture of sour decay, a bloody stench, and mold that shot straight up her nose, feeling as if it could seep into her very bones.

"GACK—" Overcome by the smell, Melody Summers couldn’t stop herself from dry-heaving twice.

She covered her mouth and nose, frowning as she looked inside. The cabinet was filled with special sealed containers. Through their transparent lids, she could see what appeared to be piles of rotten meat.

Because the power to the cabinet was out, the meat had rotted and molded, and a foul-smelling fluid was leaking from it.

Melody Summers already had a horrifying suspicion about what the "meat" was. She shuddered, not daring to look any closer. With a frown, she shut the cabinet door and backed out of the room.

She went to another locked room and repeated the process, absorbing the door into her space. This room, like the last, also contained several refrigerated cabinets.

Standing in the doorway and staring into the darkness ahead, Melody Summers decided not to explore any further.

’Her mind filled with images of innocent people dragged here by these thugs. After their tissues were matched, their organs were harvested from their living bodies on those cold operating tables...’

’She felt as if the air was thick with the spirits of the dead, drifting through this wretched basement, struggling in vain to escape...’

Melody Summers felt a tightness in her chest. Forcing herself to stop thinking about it, she silently walked out of the basement, planning to turn her findings over to the police as soon as she could.

Back in the room, Ms. Archer was still on the floor. When she saw Melody Summers approach, she glared fiercely at her, making muffled whimpering sounds. Her eyes were filled with a potent mix of anxiety and panic, laced with a trace of fear.

Melody Summers ignored her. After confirming that the tape binding her showed no signs of coming loose, she left the room and gently closed the door.

Next, Melody Summers walked into the living room, which was thick with the smell of blood. The man’s corpse still lay on the floor, surrounded by a large pool of blood that was already beginning to darken.

Holding her breath, Melody Summers went to the apartment’s other bedroom door. She tried the handle and found it was unlocked.

She quietly turned the knob and pushed the door open a crack.

Peeking through the crack, Melody Summers cautiously looked inside. To her surprise, the room wasn’t pitch black; a faint light glowed within.

In that faint light, Melody saw a disheveled woman tied up inside the room.

Startled, she quickly pushed the door open and went inside.

At the sound, the woman in the room looked up, revealing a face Melody Summers knew well.

The moment their eyes met, Melody Summers cried out in astonishment, "Clara Hayes?!"

The little formal dress Clara Hayes had been wearing was gone. She was completely naked, her body covered in bruises and marks. It wasn’t hard to imagine what she had just endured.

Melody Summers frowned. She strode forward, picked the dress up from the floor, and draped it over Clara Hayes, covering her naked body.

Clara Hayes’s hands and feet were bound together, and her mouth was gagged. Seeing Melody Summers enter, she looked at her anxiously, struggling and whimpering, unable to make a sound.

Looking at Clara Hayes’s desperate, bloodshot eyes, Melody Summers hesitated for a second before stepping forward and pulling the gag from her mouth.

Watching Clara gasp for breath, swallowing repeatedly to moisten her dry mouth, Melody Summers frowned and asked, "Clara Hayes, how did you end up tied up here?"

’Aren’t Ms. Archer and Young outside working for Hector Hayes? Why would they lock up his own daughter, Clara Hayes, and subject her to this kind of abuse?’

Clara Hayes subconsciously shot back, "What about you? Why are you here?"

Hearing this, Melody Summers let out a cold snort. "Me? I was lured here by your father’s lackeys..."

Before Melody Summers could finish, Clara Hayes yelled, "Those two aren’t my father’s men! They work for that bitch Lily Adler!"

With bloodshot eyes, Clara Hayes then shouted at Melody Summers, "Untie me! I’m going to go settle things with that bitch Lily Adler!"

’Thinking of the torture she had just endured, Clara Hayes wanted nothing more than to slice that mother-daughter pair, Lily Adler and Sylvia Lancaster, into a thousand pieces!’

Seeing Clara Hayes’s agitated, almost crazed expression, Melody Summers didn’t move. Her tone was icy as she asked, "Why should I untie you? Are we friends? Have you already forgotten how you helped Sylvia Lancaster come after me?"