Chapter 8 - The Children Who Survived
Within forty-eight hours, six surviving Project Second Heart subjects were placed under federal protection.
The seventh had disappeared.
His name was Jonah Bell.
Age sixteen.
Last seen three weeks earlier.
His mother told investigators that Jonah had suffered headaches, nosebleeds, and episodes of confusion before vanishing from his bedroom in Ohio.
No broken window.
No forced entry.
His shoes remained beside the door.
The case transformed overnight.
It was no longer merely about what had happened fifteen years earlier.
Someone was collecting the survivors.
Agent Cole told Emily this in a private conference room.
She stared through the hospital window at the parking structure below.
"Collecting."
"I don't like the word either."
"Then use another."
"We don't have one."
"Is Voss taking them?"
"We believe so."
"Why?"
"Unknown."
Emily laughed bitterly.
"Everything is unknown."
Cole didn't disagree.
Maya had improved enough to leave intensive care, but doctors kept her hospitalized.
The mysterious tissue remained inside her.
A second scan showed the structure was roughly the size of a grapefruit.
It had vessels.
It had layered tissues.
And, according to one specialist, electrical activity.
That discovery caused another room to go silent.
Emily stared at the neurologist.
"Electrical activity like what?"
"Very faint signal patterns."
"Like a heartbeat?"
"No."
The neurologist looked uncomfortable.
"More like neural impulses."
Maya was in the room.
She stared at him.
"You mean brain activity?"
"Not a brain."
"But something is thinking?"
"No."
The doctor answered too quickly.
Maya noticed.
"So you don't know."
"No. We don't."
That evening Maya refused dinner.
Emily sat beside her.
"You need to eat."
"I have another person's brain growing inside me."
"We don't know that."
"Mom."
Emily stopped.
Maya stared toward the dark window.
"What if that's why I remember things that never happened?"
Emily felt cold.
"What things?"
Maya looked at her.
"You remember when I was nine and I kept drawing that blue house?"
Emily did.
For almost a year, Maya had drawn the same house.
Blue siding.
White porch.
A large oak tree.
Emily had assumed she saw it on television.
"Yes."
"I've never been there."
"Probably something you imagined."
Maya shook her head.
"I know the rooms."
Emily's pulse accelerated.
"What rooms?"
"The kitchen has yellow cabinets. There's a staircase with a broken fifth step. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, but the small one has stars painted on the ceiling."
Emily stared.
Maya continued.
"And there's a red bicycle in the garage."
Emily stood.
"Wait."
She opened the door.
Agent Cole was down the hall.
He came immediately.
Maya repeated the description.
Cole said nothing.
Then he pulled out his phone.
"Give me ten minutes."
He returned in seven.
His face was pale.
Emily knew before he spoke.
"The Voss family home was blue."
Maya began shaking her head.
"No."
"It was demolished twelve years ago."
"No."
"The interior photographs from an old property listing show yellow kitchen cabinets."
Maya covered her ears.
"Stop."
Emily moved beside her.
Cole hesitated.
Then Maya asked, "Was there a red bicycle?"
Cole looked at Emily.
Maya lowered her hands.
"Was there?"
"Yes."
She burst into tears.
Emily wrapped her arms around her.
"It's okay."
"It's not okay."
"No, it's not."
"How do I know their house?"
Nobody had an answer.
Later, after Maya received a sedative and finally slept, Emily found Cole alone near the vending machines.
"Tell me the part you're not telling her."
He looked at her.
"The tissue sample expresses neural proteins."
"So?"
"Some proteins are associated with memory formation."
Emily's stomach tightened.
"Can tissue carry memories?"
"Not like this."
"That's not an answer."
"We don't know."
She stared at him.
"Could Voss have done something else to her?"
"Possibly."
"Could he have brought her to his house?"
"Robert says no."
"I don't trust Robert."
"Neither do I."
Cole handed her a folder.
"There's another complication."
Inside were photographs of the six surviving children.
Emily flipped through them.
Each had a code.
Subject 03.
Subject 05.
Subject 09.
Subject 12.
Subject 17 was Maya.
Then one page caught her attention.
Subject 21.
A boy with dark hair and serious eyes.
Status: deceased, age 7.
Emily stared at the photograph.
She had seen that face before.
Not in a file.
Not in the hospital.
In her own house.
There was a photograph buried in Robert's locked desk drawer.
A boy standing beside Robert.
Emily had found it years earlier and assumed it was a relative she didn't know.
She looked at Cole.
"Who is subject twenty-one?"
Cole checked.
"Eli Thorne."
Emily's fingers went numb.
"Thorne?"
Cole's eyes narrowed.
"Do you know him?"
Emily whispered, "No."
But she already knew someone who did.
Robert.
May you like
And for the first time, Emily realized Project Second Heart might not have begun with Maya.
It might have begun with her husband.
