Chapter 13 - The Man Behind St. Gabriel
Malcolm Voss never reached Maya's floor.
He wanted them to think he would.
Federal agents flooded the stairwells and elevators while a second team searched the hospital basement.
The voice had come from a prerecorded message injected into the emergency system.
Voss himself was three blocks away.
Watching.
A traffic camera captured his vehicle leaving the area less than two minutes after the first gunshot.
The shots came from one of his accomplices, who surrendered after distracting security.
By midnight, the hospital had become a fortress.
Maya lay sedated.
The electrical activity inside the implanted tissue had decreased after the melody stopped.
That fact disturbed Dr. Harris more than almost anything else.
"External sound should not trigger a biological response like that."
Emily stood beside him.
"But it did."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"We don't know."
"Could it be psychological?"
"In Maya, certainly. But the implanted tissue reacted independently."
Emily's stomach twisted.
"So it recognized the song."
Dr. Harris stared at the scan.
"I don't know what recognized means anymore."
Agent Cole entered carrying a laptop.
"We found Voss's broadcast source."
"Where?"
"A rented office."
"He left something?"
"Yes."
They played the recovered video.
Malcolm Voss appeared seated before a gray wall.
He looked almost exactly like the photograph Cole had shown Emily.
Older.
Thinner.
But alive.
He stared into the camera.
"If you're watching this, Emily, then Maya survived the first destabilization."
Emily's blood went cold.
He knew her name.
Voss continued.
"You have every reason to hate me. Hatred is efficient. It reduces complicated history into something emotionally usable."
Emily wanted to smash the screen.
"You will be told I experimented on children because I wanted to resurrect my son. That is incorrect."
Cole paused the video.
"We can stop."
"No."
He resumed.
"Lucas's death began the work. It did not define it."
Voss leaned closer.
"Human beings assume memory belongs exclusively to the brain because the brain is where we know how to look. But biology remembers. Immune cells remember. Muscles adapt. Cellular systems retain instructions across time."
Maya stirred weakly in bed.
Emily looked at her, then back.
"We found that certain developing bodies could maintain foreign biological patterns without immediate rejection. Maya was extraordinary."
Emily's hands clenched.
"Don't call her that."
On screen, Voss almost seemed to answer.
"Her father gave us access. I will not pretend otherwise. But Robert was neither architect nor scientist. He was frightened, financially desperate, and later easy to control."
Robert's failures explained.
Not excused.
Voss continued.
"Subject seventeen did what no other subject could. She integrated."
A diagram appeared.
Several tissue samples converged toward one central structure.
"The material inside Maya is not a tumor. It is not an organ. It is a biological archive."
Dr. Harris leaned closer.
Voss said, "Fragments from multiple donors remained viable inside a single host environment. Over time, their patterns interacted."
Emily whispered, "Patterns."
Cole glanced at her.
The video continued.
"We began observing behavioral resonance. Dreams. Recognition. Emotional responses to locations and sounds the host had never encountered."
Maya opened her eyes.
She was watching.
Emily moved toward the laptop.
"Turn it off."
"No."
Maya's voice was weak.
"I want to hear."
Voss continued.
"This does not mean Maya contains other people. That interpretation would be primitive."
For once, Emily hated him slightly less for saying it.
Then he added, "But it may mean identity is less singular than we believed."
Maya whispered, "What does he want?"
The recording answered.
"Final Assembly was never resurrection. It was preservation."
Voss smiled faintly.
"Imagine history that does not die because the biological information underlying experience can be carried forward."
Cole muttered, "He's insane."
Voss's smile disappeared.
"I know what you are thinking, Agent Cole."
Cole froze.
Emily looked at him.
The recording had been made before they arrived.
Yet Voss had anticipated him.
"Call me insane if that is comforting."
He continued.
"Maya cannot simply have the structure removed. By now it is integrated with her vascular and autonomic systems. Attempting complete extraction will probably kill her."
Emily's heart stopped.
Dr. Harris whispered, "We suspected that."
Maya stared.
Voss continued.
"However, leaving it untouched will also become dangerous."
Emily stepped closer to the screen.
"What do you want?"
Again, the prerecorded man seemed to answer.
"She needs stabilization."
A location appeared.
A set of coordinates.
Cole immediately photographed them.
Voss said, "At this facility are the records and equipment required to keep her alive."
Then came the trap.
"Bring Maya."
Emily laughed bitterly.
"No."
Voss leaned toward the camera.
"If she is not there within seventy-two hours, the vascular structure will likely enter another growth phase."
Dr. Harris glanced at Maya's recent scans.
Emily saw it.
"You think he's telling the truth."
"I don't know."
"But?"
Harris hesitated.
"The structure has increased in volume since surgery."
Maya's face went pale.
"How much?"
"Three percent."
"In two days?"
"Yes."
Silence.
Voss's final words played.
"Emily, I know you believe your duty is to protect your daughter from me."
His eyes hardened.
"You are late."
The video ended.
The room remained silent.
Agent Cole studied the coordinates.
"Abandoned pharmaceutical campus in Pennsylvania."
Emily looked at Maya.
"We're not going."
Maya whispered, "Mom."
"No."
"If he's right."
"We'll find another way."
"What if there isn't one?"
"There is."
"You don't know that."
Emily stared at her daughter.
Maya reached for her hand.
"I don't want him to win."
"He won't."
"But I also don't want to die proving it."
Emily closed her eyes.
There was the impossible choice.
Trust the man who caused the nightmare.
Or gamble her daughter's life on doctors who still didn't understand what was happening.
Then Cole's phone rang.
He answered.
"Say again."
His expression changed.
Emily knew that look now.
Another secret.
Another door.
Cole ended the call.
"What?" Emily demanded.
He looked toward Maya.
"We found Dr. Rachel Bell."
Jonah's mother.
The woman he believed Voss had murdered.
Emily whispered, "Alive?"
Cole nodded.
"Very."
"Where?"
May you like
He looked at the coordinates on the screen.
"Inside the facility Voss wants us to visit."
