Chapter 4 - The Name She Was Given
Emily awoke strapped to the metal bed.
Her wrists were secured with padded restraints. Electrodes had been attached to her temples and chest.
Daniel lay unconscious in the room across the corridor.
The woman in the white coat stood beside Emily, preparing a syringe.
“You died,” Emily whispered.
Dr. Helena Vale smiled.
“So did you.”
Emily remembered the name before she remembered the face.
Dr. Vale had directed Ward Twelve.
She had always spoken gently, even while ordering procedures that left children unable to remember their own parents.
“You look disappointed,” Vale said.
“The fire.”
“Necessary.”
“You caused it.”
“We ended a compromised phase of the program.”
Emily pulled against the restraints.
“What program?”
Vale injected clear liquid into an IV line.
“You know.”
“I remember pieces.”
“That is more than you should.”
The room blurred at the edges.
Emily focused on the pain from the restraints to keep herself alert.
Vale opened a tablet.
“The government began studying trauma-conditioned memory in the late nineteen-eighties. Early research was crude. Chemical suppression. Repetition. Sensory isolation. We improved the process.”
“You experimented on children.”
“We studied adaptation.”
“You tortured us.”
“An emotional description.”
Emily heard Daniel moving in the next room.
Vale glanced toward him.
“He is interesting. His service record contains three classified periods and one mission connected to a facility called Black Harbor.”
Daniel’s eyes opened.
He tested his restraints without speaking.
Vale returned her attention to Emily.
“Do you remember the morning you arrived here?”
“No.”
“Your birth name?”
“Elise Voss.”
“Do you remember your father?”
A sudden image struck Emily.
A man carrying her through rain.
Blood on his collar.
A black car waiting with its rear door open.
Her father shouting, Don’t let them take the case.
The memory vanished.
Vale watched the monitor.
“There. Increased neurological response.”
“What case?”
Vale gave no answer.
“You were brought to us because your father stole something important. He believed hiding it inside you would keep it safe.”
“Inside me?”
“Not physically.”
Emily’s pulse climbed.
“A memory,” Vale said. “A sequence of visual and auditory information encoded through repetition before you arrived. Account numbers. Names. Locations. Evidence of an organization your father intended to expose.”
“Who were they?”
Vale leaned closer.
“We called them the Meridian Circle.”
Daniel spoke from the other room.
“I’ve heard that name.”
Vale turned toward him.
“Of course you have.”
Daniel’s face changed slightly.
“You operated Black Harbor.”
“I designed it.”
“What happened to my team?”
“They learned too much.”
Daniel pulled violently against the restraints.
Vale watched without concern.
Emily looked between them.
“You knew he would be at the hospital.”
“Not specifically. But Meridian did.”
“Was Aaron Pike working for you?”
Vale’s expression hardened.
“Aaron was a failed patient. He believed finding you would protect him.”
“From whom?”
“From the people who funded this ward.”
Vale removed the electrodes from Emily’s left temple.
“Meridian has spent sixteen years searching for the memory your father planted. They believe it survived our conditioning.”
“Did it?”
“That is what today’s test confirmed.”
Emily thought of the shooting.
Her reaction time.
The gunman’s fear.
The photograph.
“You staged the attack.”
“No. Aaron did. But someone guided him.”
“Who?”
Vale pressed another syringe into the IV line.
“That answer may already be inside your mind.”
The lights flickered.
A low vibration moved through the walls.
Vale looked toward the ceiling.
Daniel smiled faintly.
“You brought a tracker,” Emily said.
“Two.”
A blast tore through the far end of the corridor.
The steel shutters shook.
Vale hurried toward the door.
Daniel twisted his wrists, revealing a thin metal blade hidden beneath his watchband. He cut through one restraint and reached for the second.
Three armed men entered the ward wearing black tactical equipment.
Their weapons had no visible markings.
The first man shot Dr. Vale in the shoulder.
She fell behind the nurses’ station.
The second moved toward Emily.
“Secure E-17.”
Daniel broke free.
He struck the third attacker in the throat, seized his rifle, and fired twice.
Emily ripped the IV line from her arm.
The man approaching her raised his weapon.
Before he could fire, someone shot him from the doorway.
Detective Ruiz entered with two police officers.
“Everyone down!”
Gunfire erupted through the ward.
Emily rolled the metal bed onto its side, using it for cover.
Vale crawled through a hidden panel beneath the observation desk.
Emily saw her disappear.
“Vale is escaping!”
Daniel fired toward the advancing attackers.
“Go!”
Emily cut her remaining restraints on shattered glass and followed Vale into the passage.
The hidden corridor descended beneath Ward Twelve.
At the bottom was a steel door standing partly open.
Emily pushed through it.
The room beyond contained hundreds of file boxes.
Photographs covered one wall.
Children.
Patients.
Soldiers.
Politicians.
Judges.
Some faces had red circles drawn around them.
At the center of the wall was a photograph of Emily as a child standing beside a boy.
The boy was labeled M-04.
Across the bottom of the photograph, someone had written:
E-17 WILL REMEMBER WHEN M-04 RETURNS.
A hand closed around Emily’s shoulder.
She turned, ready to strike.
Aaron Pike stood behind her.
May you like
He was no longer in police custody.
And he was holding Detective Ruiz’s gun.
