Chapter 10 - GIDEON VALE
Daniel’s disappearance triggered a regional manhunt.
No one understood how the reinforced glass had been cut without alerting security. Camera footage showed the corridor empty for six minutes, although three guards insisted they never left their posts.
All three guards later tested positive for the memory-suppressing compound.
Claire’s fear changed into determination.
“They can enter hospitals and police buildings,” she told Ortiz. “Keeping me hidden won’t stop them.”
“It may slow them down.”
“They know every place you take me.”
Ortiz placed Daniel’s photograph on a case board.
“Then someone inside law enforcement may be helping them.”
Dr. Patel entered with the latest fetal DNA analysis.
The child’s paternal profile matched genetic material recovered from St. Orison.
The sample belonged to Dr. Gideon Vale.
Claire looked at the name.
“Can an embryo be created and transferred without me knowing?”
“Yes,” Dr. Patel said.
“Could Daniel believe the child was his?”
“If he was given false records.”
“Why use Vale?”
Dr. Bell answered from across the room.
“His profile contains the engineered susceptibility markers Daniel described. Combined with your resistance markers, the child may carry an unusual neurological response.”
“To the conditioning compound.”
“Possibly complete resistance.”
Claire touched her stomach.
“They created my baby to study it.”
Ortiz shook her head.
“We still don’t know whether Vale is alive.”
A laptop recovered from St. Orison contained archived videos of Bellwether’s early work.
In one recording, a younger Gideon Vale addressed a room of investors.
“The next generation will not be controlled by force,” he said. “They will be guided through attachment, chemical reinforcement, and inherited responsiveness.”
Behind him was a diagram showing family trees.
The Rowe line and Hale line intersected at a single highlighted child.
EVE-1.
Another recording showed Amelia confronting Vale in a laboratory.
“You promised treatment for trauma,” she said.
“We are treating social instability.”
“You are manufacturing obedience.”
“We are removing destructive choice.”
“From children.”
“From humanity.”
Amelia reached for the camera.
The recording ended.
Ortiz located surviving Bellwether employees.
Most refused to speak.
One former laboratory technician, Nora Finch, agreed to meet.
Nora was seventy-three and lived in a guarded retirement community two hours away.
Ortiz arranged a secure video interview.
Nora appeared on screen wearing an oxygen tube.
When she saw Claire, she began crying.
“You have Amelia’s eyes.”
“Is my mother alive?”
“She was when they moved her.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who is Gideon Vale?”
Nora looked toward the door behind her.
“He believed memory was the weakness that caused disobedience. If people remembered pain, they resisted. If they remembered love, they became loyal to the wrong person.”
Claire thought of Daniel.
“What did he do to us?”
“You were part of the paired attachment trials.”
“Daniel and me?”
“D-4 and A-17.”
“Were we married at nineteen?”
Nora nodded.
“Your attachment survived every chemical separation. Vale considered it a failure.”
“Why did Daniel help them erase me?”
“He didn’t.”
Claire froze.
“The man in the chapel wasn’t D-4.”
“He looked exactly like Daniel.”
“D-3 and D-4 were nearly identical.”
“Twins?”
“Not naturally.”
Claire stared at her.
“Clones?”
Nora began coughing.
Ortiz asked for clarification.
Nora wiped her mouth.
“The D-series came from one paternal source. Altered embryos. Closely matched but not identical.”
“Which one is my husband?”
Nora looked at Claire.
“I don’t know.”
Claire’s mouth went dry.
“Which one is the father of my baby?”
“Vale was the source of every D-series embryo.”
Dr. Patel leaned closer.
“You mean Gideon Vale’s genetic material was used to create Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“Then the DNA might identify Vale as the fetus’s father because Daniel is genetically derived from him.”
Nora nodded.
“Depending on the transfer records.”
Claire’s hand closed over the edge of the table.
“So Daniel may still be the biological father.”
“Or D-3. Or Vale himself.”
“Where are the records?”
Nora’s eyes filled with fear.
“Amelia hid the original ledger.”
“Where?”
“She divided the location into three memories and conditioned three people to hold one part each.”
“Who?”
“You.”
Claire shook her head.
“I don’t remember.”
“Daniel.”
“He’s missing.”
“And the first child.”
“What first child?”
Nora looked toward Claire’s stomach.
“F-05 is not your first surviving baby.”
A shadow moved behind Nora’s chair.
The screen shook.
Nora whispered, “He found me.”
Then the connection ended.
Police reached her room eleven minutes later.
Nora was gone.
On her bed was a newborn identification bracelet.
The name printed on it was:
May you like
BABY GIRL ROWE
DATE OF BIRTH: NINE YEARS AGO
