Chapter 4 - Welcome Back
Every television.
Every patient monitor.
Every digital directory inside the hospital displayed the same message.
WELCOME BACK, SABRINA.
The words remained on the screens for exactly five seconds.
Then everything returned to normal.
Doctors looked around in confusion. Nurses blamed the hospital's computer system. Patients continued talking as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
But Detective Harris didn't move.
He stared at me.
"Tell me the truth."
"I don't know what that was."
"Someone programmed an entire hospital network to recognize your name."
"I've never been here before."
"You don't have to lie."
"I'm not."
He searched my face for several seconds, then lowered his voice.
"My father spent thirty-two years investigating a secret organization."
"What organization?"
"He never discovered its real name. He only called them the Crest."
Harris slipped the coin back into the evidence bag.
"Three weeks before he retired, he disappeared. They never found his body."
Another detective hurried toward us. "The surveillance server. You need to see this."
We followed him into the hospital security office. The footage showed Kenneth's recovery room. The door never opened, yet his hospital bed slowly rolled backward and vanished through a closed wall. Maya's bed disappeared the same way.
A reflection in the polished floor revealed a shoe walking beside Kenneth's bed. Someone had planned the disappearance carefully.
The wall led to a sealed storage room. Beneath its hollow concrete floor, workers uncovered steel stairs descending into darkness.
We entered an underground corridor lined with numbered doors. Door 117 stood open. Inside were filing cabinets, birth certificates, DNA reports, photographs, and servers.
Justin found a file labeled PROJECT TWIN - SUBJECT 042 - MAYA SULLIVAN.
It listed Maya as the original child, removed, and a replacement child as completed.
Then every steel door slammed shut. Red lights came on. A monitor showed Kenneth, alive and tied to a chair.
"Sabrina, if you're seeing this, you're already inside. You have less than thirty minutes. Don't trust the files. The real archive isn't below the hospital."
A masked figure pressed a gun to his head and ordered him to reveal where I was born.
Kenneth closed his eyes.
"Sabrina... your parents weren't the people who raised you."
The screen went black.
A nearby filing cabinet unlocked. One drawer opened by itself.
May you like
Inside was a red folder.
SUBJECT 001 - SABRINA ELIZABETH ROLLINS.
