Chapter 12 - Beneath St. Catherine’s
Chicago waited beneath a cold gray sky.
Police surrounded St. Catherine’s Medical Center, but the hospital remained open. Ambulances continued arriving. Patients moved through the front lobby unaware that a hidden facility existed beneath them.
Piper entered through the old pediatric wing with Adrian and Renata.
Marcus had insisted on coming.
Renata had refused.
He came anyway, traveling with a separate police escort.
Now he stood behind the security barrier, watching as Piper approached the sealed elevator.
A biometric scanner glowed beside the door.
She placed her hand against it.
ACCESS DENIED.
Adrian frowned.
“They removed you.”
Piper opened her father’s pocket watch.
She entered the sequence.
The scanner changed from red to white.
VOICE CONFIRMATION REQUIRED.
Piper looked at the microphone.
“Dr. Piper Hale.”
The system responded.
SUBJECT L-02 CONFIRMED.
The elevator opened.
Marcus heard the words.
“Subject?”
Piper faced him.
“I was part of the project after Dad’s drowning.”
“You were nine.”
“I know.”
“You remembered?”
“Not until Bellweather.”
He looked sick.
“What did they do to you?”
“I’m going to find out.”
The elevator allowed only one biometric subject at a time.
Renata tried to override it.
The doors began closing.
Piper stepped inside alone.
Adrian caught the edge.
“I’m coming.”
The scanner rejected him.
Piper looked at Renata.
“Find another entrance.”
“We will.”
Marcus moved toward the elevator.
“Piper.”
She held his gaze.
“I’ll bring him back.”
The doors closed.
The descent lasted nearly a minute.
When they opened, Piper entered a brightly lit corridor.
No guards.
No alarms.
Only white walls and glass patient rooms.
Inside the first room lay an elderly man connected to machines. His chart listed his death date as three years earlier.
The next held a woman declared dead after a house fire.
The next held a teenager whose face Piper recognized from a missing-person poster.
All were alive.
Some breathed with ventilators.
Others lay motionless beneath cooling blankets.
Lazarus patients.
Piper walked deeper into the facility.
Speakers activated.
Mara’s voice filled the corridor.
“Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“It’s a prison.”
“It is an ark.”
“For people you murdered?”
“For people medicine abandoned.”
“You declared them dead.”
“Legally convenient.”
Piper reached a central laboratory.
Noah lay on a table behind a glass wall.
He was unconscious, but the monitor showed a heartbeat.
Piper rushed toward him.
The door locked.
Mara emerged from another corridor wearing surgical scrubs.
She looked exactly as Celeste had described.
Black hair.
Gray eyes.
Scar beneath her ear.
“You came,” Mara said.
“Release him.”
“When we finish.”
“What did you give him?”
“A controlled hypothermic agent.”
“He drowned less than twenty-four hours ago. His lungs are injured.”
“Which makes the test more valuable.”
Piper lunged.
Two guards emerged and restrained her.
Mara remained calm.
“You cannot help him while angry.”
“I will kill you.”
“No. You save people. That is why you are here.”
Mara led Piper to a control room overlooking Noah.
On the screens were scans of his brain, heart, and blood.
“The marker allows unusual resistance to oxygen deprivation,” Mara explained. “But survival varies. Thomas possessed the strongest expression we had ever documented.”
“And me?”
“Stronger.”
“Then why do you need Noah?”
“Because genetics evolve.”
Piper looked through the glass.
“What are you planning?”
“To stop his heart for three minutes.”
“No.”
“To prove the protocol.”
“No.”
“You saved him once without knowing what you carried. Imagine what you could do with the correct tools.”
“He is not your experiment.”
“He is your family.”
Mara placed a file in front of her.
Inside were records from Piper’s childhood.
After the boat accident, doctors had intentionally stopped Piper’s heart under controlled conditions.
Twice.
Each time they restarted it.
Piper’s childhood drawings had been made between experiments.
“Your father tried to remove you,” Mara said. “He attacked Malcolm and escaped with you.”
“Then why don’t I remember?”
“Medication. Trauma. Time.”
Piper turned the page.
A photograph showed Thomas carrying her through a corridor while alarms flashed behind him.
“He saved me.”
“Yes.”
“And you killed him.”
“Malcolm did.”
Piper looked up.
“So he is alive.”
Mara smiled.
“My father believed fear was necessary for progress. I believe cooperation is more efficient.”
“Where is he?”
“Watching.”
A shadow moved behind the upper observation glass.
A man stood there.
Older.
Thinner.
But the silver serpent ring caught the light.
Malcolm Vane stepped into view.
Piper’s heart pounded.
The dead man lifted one hand in greeting.
Mara pressed a control.
Noah’s monitor alarmed.
His heartbeat slowed.
Piper turned.
“What did you do?”
“The test has begun.”
She tried to reach the door.
The guards held her.
Noah’s heart rate dropped to thirty.
Twenty.
Ten.
Then a flat line.
May you like
Mara placed a surgical access card in Piper’s hand.
“You have three minutes, Dr. Hale.”
