Chapter 16 - The FrequencyAt 2:13 in the morning, every monitor in the underground clinic displayed the same number.
Not a warning code.
Not an error message.
A heartbeat.
Dr. Elias Voss stared at the screens while seventeen-year-old Lila Mercer slept behind the reinforced glass.
“There are twelve machines in this building,” Dana Mercer whispered. “Why are all of them showing my daughter’s pulse?”
Elias did not answer.
Because he already knew.
Three days earlier, surgeons had discovered a thin metallic capsule buried beside Lila’s diaphragm after she collapsed during basketball practice. At first, Elias believed it was some kind of experimental medical implant.
Then they discovered it was transmitting.
Not outward.
To other implants.
Thirty-seven people across four states had been identified with similar devices.
Tonight, every one of them had disappeared from the medical network at exactly the same moment.
Except Lila.
Dana stepped toward Elias.
“Tell me what you’re not saying.”
Elias finally turned.
“The implants aren’t being controlled from a central server.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they control each other.”
Dana’s face tightened.
“A network?”
“A living network.”
Inside the room, Lila suddenly opened her eyes.
Every monitor changed.
Dana rushed to the glass.
“Lila?”
The girl sat upright.
Then she looked directly at the security camera.
“Mom.”
Dana pressed the intercom.
“I’m here.”
“There’s someone outside.”
Elias checked the exterior cameras.
Empty parking lot.
Empty hallway.
Locked elevator.
“No one’s there,” he said.
Lila shook her head.
“I can hear him.”
Dana’s blood went cold.
“Hear who?”
Lila pressed both hands against her ears.
The monitors jumped to 104.
Then 118.
Then 131.
“He keeps saying my name.”
Elias entered the isolation room.
“Lila, listen to me. The implant may be stimulating your auditory nerves. What you’re hearing might not be real.”
“It’s real.”
“How do you know?”
Lila looked at him.
“Because he told me something I never told anyone.”
Dana stepped inside.
“What?”
Lila’s eyes filled with tears.
“He said Dad didn’t die in the accident.”
Silence.
Dana stopped breathing.
Lila’s father, Michael Mercer, had supposedly died five years earlier when his vehicle plunged from a mountain road during a storm.
There had been no body.
Only burned wreckage.
Dana had spent years teaching herself to accept what could never be proven.
Elias slowly approached the bed.
“What exactly did the voice say?”
Lila swallowed.
“He said, ‘Your father is waiting where the river runs backward.’”
Dana stumbled against the wall.
Elias caught her arm.
“What?”
She stared at Lila.
“That was something Michael used to say.”
Lila looked confused.
“What did it mean?”
Dana closed her eyes.
There was an abandoned hydroelectric station north of Ashford.
Michael had taken her there on their first date.
Water from its old pumping system could temporarily reverse direction through one of the underground channels.
Michael jokingly called it the river that ran backward.
Nobody else knew.
Nobody.
A sudden bang echoed through the clinic.
Elias turned.
The elevator indicator lit up.
B2.
Someone was descending.
“But the elevator is locked,” Dana whispered.
Elias ran toward the control panel.
The system rejected his override.
B3.
Lila climbed off the bed.
“Mom.”
B4.
Dana grabbed her daughter.
The doors opened.
A man stood inside.
Gray hair.
Blood on his shirt.
A deep scar across his right cheek.
Dana stared at him as though she were looking at a ghost.
Michael Mercer lifted his hands.
“Before either of you asks anything,” he said, “we have seven minutes.”
Dana’s face collapsed.
“Michael?”
He looked at Lila.
Then at the monitors.
“No.”
Fear replaced the relief in his eyes.
“It already found her.”
Behind Lila, every screen changed simultaneously.
72 disappeared.
One sentence replaced it.
FIND THE ORIGINAL.
May you like
And Michael whispered,
“That’s me.”
Related Stories
