Chapter 11 - Seven Days
The hospital locked down the neonatal unit.
Every employee was reverified.
Every medication was tested.
Elias stabilized, but the abnormal antibody remained unexplained.
Dr. Shah contacted specialists under false patient names to reduce the risk of interference.
The consensus was frightening.
Maya’s dormant immune modification had activated during pregnancy.
Elias had inherited part of the response.
His immune system was attacking healthy blood cells.
Without treatment, organ damage could begin within days.
The note claimed a Northstar protocol could save him.
No complete protocol existed in the records police had recovered.
Diane demanded a deal.
From a secure interview room, she insisted that only Celeste possessed the final formula.
“Then tell us where she is,” Reed said.
“If I knew, I would trade her location for my freedom.”
“You expect us to believe you attacked Maya while trying to save her baby?”
Diane’s expression hardened.
“I attacked her because Celeste gave me a choice.”
“What choice?”
“My son or hers.”
Diane revealed that she had a son named Lucas Mercer.
The family believed Lucas died in infancy thirty years earlier.
In truth, Celeste had taken him.
Northstar records listed Lucas as deceased, but Diane had received proof he was alive.
Celeste threatened to kill him unless Diane forced Maya into premature labor.
“She wanted Elias born before federal agents reached her laboratories,” Diane said.
“Where is Lucas?” Reed asked.
“I don’t know.”
Maya watched from another room.
She felt no sympathy for Diane’s decision.
“You could have warned me,” Maya said through the speaker.
Diane looked toward the camera.
“I spent thirty years believing I could outsmart Celeste. By the time I understood the trap, I had become exactly what she needed.”
“You struck my child.”
“Yes.”
“If Elias dies, nothing you say will matter.”
Diane’s eyes glistened, but she did not look away.
“I know.”
Federal investigators searched Celeste’s properties.
At a laboratory beneath a rural fertility clinic, they discovered genetic samples, archived embryos, and files labeled with Elias’s expected birth date.
The treatment formula had been deleted hours before the raid.
A computer log showed that someone copied it onto an external drive.
The user identification belonged to Lucas Mercer.
Diane stared at the evidence.
“My son is working with her.”
“Or being forced,” Lena said.
“No.” Diane’s voice broke. “That access level means he is her partner.”
A photograph was recovered from the laboratory.
It showed a forty-year-old man standing beside Celeste at a medical conference.
Maya recognized him.
Daniel Cross.
The Bennett family attorney.
The man Adrian had called on the night Diane first demanded money.
Daniel had advised the family for twelve years.
He had managed Charles’s legal affairs.
He had supervised the internal audit.
He had known every police strategy.
Lucas Mercer had been inside the Bennett family all along under another name.
Adrian wanted to deny it.
Then investigators found Daniel’s fingerprints in Northstar House.
Reed issued an arrest warrant.
Daniel’s phone was disconnected.
His home had been cleared.
He had disappeared with Celeste.
Maya looked at Elias through the NICU glass.
Six days remained.
Adrian stood beside her.
“I brought Daniel into our lives.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I trusted him.”
“So did Charles.”
“I told him about the investigator. The audit. The hospital.”
Maya turned toward him.
“Then stop blaming yourself and help me find him.”
Adrian contacted everyone Daniel had represented.
Lena examined Evelyn’s remaining notes.
Diane reviewed financial records from custody.
At midnight, Maya found the clue.
Daniel had prepared a trust amendment for the unborn Elias two months earlier.
The document contained an unusual phrase.
In the event of biological discontinuity.
Maya searched the phrase.
It appeared in an unpublished Northstar research paper written by Celeste.
The paper described a remote facility called Continuity Station.
Property records showed no such name.
But old geological surveys referenced a decommissioned observatory in the northern mountains.
The land had been purchased by a company represented by Daniel Cross.
Federal agents prepared a raid.
Before they departed, Maya received a video call.
Daniel appeared on-screen.
Behind him stood Celeste.
She was elegant, calm, and completely unafraid.
“Hello, Maya,” Celeste said.
“Give me the treatment.”
“Bring Elias to the observatory.”
“No.”
“Then he dies.”
“You need him alive.”
Celeste smiled.
“At this stage, I need only his blood.”
The screen shifted.
Charles appeared tied to a chair.
Beside him stood Lena.
A gun was pressed against her head.
Maya spun toward the empty chair beside her.
Lena had left the hospital ten minutes earlier to retrieve Evelyn’s notes.
Celeste’s voice continued.
“Bring Elias yourself. No police. No Adrian.”
The video ended.
May you like
A timer appeared on Maya’s phone.
SIX HOURS.
