Chapter 9 - The Doctor Who Stayed Silent
Ethan pushed Natalie and Rebecca through the kitchen.
The smoke burned Natalie’s eyes.
Behind them, furniture crashed. Calvin shouted to another man near the front entrance.
Rebecca pulled open the back door.
A dark figure stood in the alley.
Natalie stopped.
The figure raised both hands.
“Police,” a woman said. “Detective Lena Ortiz.”
Ethan dragged Natalie outside.
“Are you alone?”
“My partner is at the corner.”
A gunshot cracked inside the townhouse.
Glass burst from the kitchen window.
Lena drew her weapon.
“Move.”
They ran toward an unmarked car.
Rebecca climbed into the back seat with Natalie. Ethan took the passenger side.
Lena accelerated as Calvin emerged from the alley.
He raised his pistol but did not fire.
Too many houses.
Too many witnesses.
Lena drove toward the hospital district.
“I warned you not to return home,” she said to Ethan.
“I didn’t expect Rebecca to bring Natalie.”
“You knew my mother?” Natalie asked.
Lena glanced at her through the mirror.
“I’ve been investigating Marrow for fourteen months.”
“Then why hasn’t Diane been arrested?”
“Because witnesses disappear, evidence becomes inadmissible, and judges receive sealed medical arguments.”
“We have Anna’s file.”
“Where?”
Natalie looked down.
Her hands were empty.
Rebecca’s face drained of color.
“The house.”
“You left it?”
“The smoke.”
Ethan cursed.
Natalie felt panic surge through her.
“It was our only proof.”
“No,” Rebecca said. “I photographed every page.”
“Where are the photographs?”
Rebecca reached inside her jacket.
Her phone was gone.
Calvin must have taken it during the escape or it had fallen in Ethan’s house.
Lena struck the steering wheel.
“We can’t go back.”
Ethan turned toward Natalie.
“Do you still have copies from the warehouse?”
“The memory card.”
“Where is it?”
“In a shoe at Diane’s house.”
No one spoke.
Lena drove into the underground entrance of Bellhaven Memorial.
Security officers closed the gate behind them.
Inside a private examination room, Ethan cleaned Natalie’s wounds.
Lena remained near the door while Rebecca sat beside the bed.
Natalie watched Ethan prepare a local anesthetic.
“You knew me when I was nineteen.”
His hands stopped.
“Yes.”
“You were there.”
“Yes.”
“You let them drug me.”
“I was a resident.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.” He looked at her. “It isn’t.”
He placed the syringe down.
“The study was presented as an immune-response trial for women with recurrent pregnancy loss. I believed every participant had consented.”
“I had never been pregnant.”
“I did not know that when they brought you in.”
“When did you learn?”
“After the injection.”
Natalie’s eyes burned.
“And you stayed silent.”
“I reported it.”
“To a board funded by the Mercers.”
“I was naive.”
“My mother lost me because you were naive.”
Ethan accepted the accusation without defending himself.
“Yes.”
Rebecca looked away.
Natalie fought tears.
“Why did they choose me?”
Ethan sat opposite her.
“Your blood contains a rare combination of immune markers. It can tolerate tissue that most bodies reject.”
“An embryo?”
“More than that.”
Lena closed the door.
“We do not know how much of this is safe to tell her.”
“It’s her body,” Rebecca said.
Ethan nodded.
“The Mercer program began as an attempt to produce compatible organ donors within families carrying hereditary diseases.”
Natalie stared at him.
“Children bred to donate organs?”
“That was the original justification.”
“And later?”
“The research expanded.”
“To what?”
“Artificial immune compatibility. Embryos selected not only for genetic traits but for their ability to accept transplanted tissue from multiple relatives.”
Natalie felt cold.
“A universal donor child.”
“Not universal,” Ethan said. “But close enough to be worth billions.”
Rebecca’s voice shook.
“Anna’s baby survived.”
Ethan looked at her sharply.
“You found confirmation?”
“A note. Female infant viable. N.M. Protocol.”
Ethan stood so quickly the chair scraped the floor.
“What exact letters?”
“N.M.”
He turned toward the door.
Lena blocked him.
“What does it mean?”
Ethan’s face had gone pale.
“Natal Matrix.”
Natalie gripped the blanket.
“What is that?”
“The final branch of the Mercer program.”
He looked at her.
“It was named after you.”
Natalie could not speak.
“You survived the first immune-conditioning trial,” Ethan continued. “No one else did. Your biological response became the template for everything that followed.”
“Anna’s child?”
“She may have been created using cells derived from Natalie’s original samples.”
Rebecca covered her mouth.
“That would make the child related to her?”
“Not exactly. But the child’s immune profile may have been modeled on Natalie’s.”
Natalie remembered the initials on Diane’s files.
N.M. Protocol.
Her name had been attached to an experiment before she entered the Mercer family.
A nurse entered the room.
“Doctor Cole, there’s an attorney asking for Mrs. Mercer.”
“Name?”
“Samuel Voss.”
Lena swore under her breath.
“Diane’s lawyer.”
The nurse looked uneasy.
“He has a court order.”
“For what?”
“Involuntary psychiatric evaluation.”
Natalie stared at her.
The nurse continued.
“It was signed twenty minutes ago.”
Lena took the document and read it.
“This judge is in Marrow’s network.”
Ethan stepped toward the door.
“She is an assault victim.”
“The order states she is delusional, violent, and at risk of self-harm.”
Natalie looked at Mark’s name on the petition.
Her husband had signed it.
Footsteps approached outside.
Hospital security.
Lena leaned close to Natalie.
“If they take you upstairs under this order, they can isolate you.”
“What do I do?”
Ethan pulled the fire alarm.
Sirens erupted through the corridor.
Sprinklers opened overhead.
Amid the confusion, he pushed Natalie’s bed through a side door.
But at the end of the hall, Mark stood waiting.
His suit was wet from the sprinklers.
His eyes found Natalie.
May you like
Then he smiled.
“Found you.”
