Chapter 7 - The Girl Behind the Glass
The video feed carried no location data.
Agent Keene’s technical team traced it through servers in six countries before the signal disappeared inside an encrypted government network.
The girl remained visible for forty-three seconds.
She looked thin and exhausted. A bruise darkened one side of her face. Medical adhesive covered her neck where wires had recently been removed.
“Sarah,” she said to the camera, “my name is June Vale. I know what they told Robert. Most of it is a lie.”
The feed flickered.
“They didn’t create me from you. They created you from me.”
Then the screen went black.
Sarah watched the recording again and again.
The statement made no sense.
She was forty years old. June appeared fifteen. How could anyone have created Sarah from a child?
Agent Keene offered a possible explanation.
“June may mean her genetic line came first. The embryo used to conceive Maya could have been derived from June’s original template.”
“But June wasn’t born yet.”
“The photograph dates may be false. Her apparent age may be false. We are dealing with people who manipulate medical records.”
Detective Ortiz returned from questioning Diane.
“She won’t discuss June. But she gave us one location.”
“Where?”
“An abandoned fertility clinic outside Briarwood.”
Sarah knew the name before Ortiz said it.
North Briar Reproductive Center.
The clinic where Sarah and Robert had undergone testing before Maya’s conception.
The building had officially burned down sixteen years earlier.
Fire department records said the interior was destroyed.
Satellite images showed the structure still standing.
At midnight, a tactical team entered the clinic.
Sarah remained at the hospital with Maya while watching body-camera footage through Agent Keene’s secure tablet.
The main floor was empty except for old desks, broken glass, and mold-darkened walls. Fire damage blackened the ceiling, but the building’s foundation appeared untouched.
An officer found fresh tire tracks behind the property.
Another discovered a steel door hidden beneath fallen shelving.
The door opened into a descending corridor.
The underground level had electricity.
White lights activated one section at a time as the team moved deeper.
They passed abandoned laboratories, sealed freezers, and rooms filled with empty infant cribs.
Sarah turned away from the screen.
Agent Keene lowered the tablet.
“You don’t have to watch.”
“Yes, I do.”
The team reached a room marked with the three-lined circle.
Inside were hundreds of paper files.
Names.
Birth dates.
Photographs of pregnant women taken without their knowledge.
Sarah’s file was in the first cabinet.
The documents described her fertility evaluation, family history, emotional responses, and suitability as a maternal host.
Maternal host.
Not patient.
Not mother.
Host.
A handwritten note appeared on the final page.
Candidate displays unusually strong protective attachment. Ideal for long-term environmental conditioning of Subject M-3.
M-3.
Maya.
Sarah looked at Agent Keene.
“The file called her M-3.”
“Robert said M-1 was the first subject and the other girl was M-2.”
“He lied again.”
The tactical team found a refrigerated vault.
Inside were thousands of cryogenic containers.
Most were empty.
Several were labeled with numbers matching the subject files.
One container bore Sarah’s full name.
The officer lifted it carefully.
It contained no embryo.
It contained a small glass ampoule filled with dark red fluid.
The label read:
SOURCE MATERIAL
1986
Sarah had been born in 1986.
Agent Keene requested immediate transport of the sample.
Before the team could leave, the steel door at the end of the corridor closed automatically.
Gas began flowing from vents in the ceiling.
The officers put on masks and searched for another exit.
A voice came through the facility speakers.
“Daniel Keene.”
Agent Keene froze beside Sarah.
The voice was female, elegant, and calm.
“You have spent twelve years chasing a project you still do not understand.”
Dr. Evelyn Vale.
Keene activated his communication channel.
“Where is June?”
“She is where she has always been.”
“You’re holding a child.”
“No. I’m preserving a beginning.”
Sarah leaned toward the microphone.
“What did you do to my daughter?”
There was a pause.
Then Dr. Vale replied.
“Which daughter?”
Sarah’s fingers tightened around the table.
“Maya.”
“Maya is alive because of Meridian.”
“You put a device in her body.”
“To measure a threat that has been growing inside her since birth.”
“What threat?”
“Ask Dr. Lawson why he recognized the implant.”
Sarah looked toward the ICU.
Dr. Lawson had been the first doctor to see the object.
He had claimed not to know what it was.
Dr. Vale continued.
“Ask him where he worked before he came to Saint Matthew’s Hospital.”
The transmission ended.
The tactical team escaped through a maintenance tunnel seconds before the gas concentration became lethal.
They recovered Sarah’s sample and sixty-three subject files.
June was not in the facility.
Dr. Lawson was no longer in the ICU.
Nurse Emily said he had received a call and left ten minutes earlier.
His office was empty.
His hospital identification lay on the desk.
Detective Ortiz searched his employment history.
Before Saint Matthew’s, Lawson had worked at a private military hospital whose records had been sealed after a federal investigation.
The hospital’s name appeared repeatedly in the Meridian files.
Maya woke to find Sarah staring at the doorway.
“Where’s Dr. Lawson?”
“I don’t know.”
Maya looked afraid.
“He was in the white room too.”
Sarah turned.
“What?”
“He wore a mask, but I recognized his voice.”
The ICU lights flickered.
Maya’s heart monitor emitted a warning tone.
A new signal appeared.
Not a countdown.
Coordinates.
Agent Keene entered them into a map.
They pointed to an abandoned train station seventy miles north.
May you like
Then Maya’s monitor displayed two words.
BRING ROBERT.
