Chapter 4 - The Name Thomas Buried
Mary struck Thomas across the face.
The sound echoed through the corridor.
They had been married for forty-three years.
Daniel had never heard Mary raise her voice at him.
“You told me your past was finished,” she said.
Thomas did not defend himself.
He lowered his head.
“My name was not always Thomas Hale.”
Vivian remained outside the locked doors, watching.
Daniel wanted to force answers from her, but the surgery had begun, Clara was missing, and Leo remained trapped in the Mercer estate.
Everything was unraveling at once.
One of the police officers approached Thomas.
“What was your name?”
Thomas looked at the officer.
“Elias Voss.”
Vivian closed her eyes.
The name meant something to her.
Daniel saw it.
“What is Project Voss?” he asked.
Thomas flinched.
Daniel remembered the three-circle symbol on the capsule and burned papers.
“You were involved.”
Thomas sat heavily.
“Before I became a farmer, I was a biomedical engineer.”
Mary stared at him as if he were a stranger.
“You told me you repaired agricultural machinery.”
“I did. Later.”
“What happened before?”
Thomas looked toward the surgery wing.
“I worked for a private research company called Orison Biologics.”
Adrian’s face went pale.
Daniel knew Orison. The company had disappeared after a laboratory fire twenty-nine years earlier. His father, Richard Mercer, had once been one of its investors.
Daniel turned toward Vivian.
“You knew him from Orison.”
Vivian did not answer.
Thomas continued.
“We developed implantable drug-delivery systems. Tiny capsules designed to release medication over time.”
“The things inside Sophie,” Dr. Ortiz said.
“The early versions were larger. Less precise.”
“What were they treating?”
Thomas rubbed his hands together.
“Originally, immune disorders.”
“Originally?”
“The company changed direction after Richard Mercer invested.”
Daniel’s father had died in a boating accident when Daniel was twelve. Vivian rarely spoke about his business dealings.
“What direction?” Daniel asked.
Thomas looked at him.
“Behavioral regulation.”
Mary stepped back.
“You made devices to control people?”
“We were told they would stabilize severe neurological conditions. Reduce panic responses. Aggression. Trauma.”
“And what did they actually do?”
Thomas’s eyes filled with shame.
“They made subjects suggestible.”
The police officer began recording.
Thomas spoke slowly, as though each word required him to excavate a grave.
“The capsules released compounds triggered by specific sound frequencies. A subject could be calmed, sedated, frightened, or made confused.”
Daniel thought of Sophie’s sudden obedience around Vivian. Her fatigue. Her fear of speaking.
“Vivian implanted them.”
Thomas looked at the locked doors.
“The technology should not exist anymore.”
“But it does.”
“I destroyed the research after the fire.”
Vivian laughed softly from the other side of the glass.
“No, Elias. You stole it.”
Thomas stood.
“I saved the children.”
Daniel turned sharply.
“What children?”
Thomas did not answer.
Vivian did.
“Your wife was one of them.”
Daniel stared at her.
Clara had always believed Thomas and Mary were her biological parents. She had grown up on their farm, attended public school, and lived an ordinary life.
But now Daniel remembered small inconsistencies.
Clara had no photographs before the age of four.
Her birth certificate had been issued two years late.
She suffered recurring nightmares about white rooms and ringing bells.
Thomas closed his eyes.
“Clara was Subject Seven.”
Mary covered her mouth.
Even she had not known.
“What are you saying?” Daniel asked.
Thomas’s voice broke.
“Clara was born inside Orison.”
Daniel crossed the corridor and seized Thomas by the jacket.
“Who were her parents?”
“I don’t know.”
“You raised her for thirty-five years.”
“I loved her from the day I carried her out of that building.”
“That does not answer me.”
“The records were destroyed.”
“By whom?”
Thomas looked toward Vivian.
“By Richard Mercer.”
Vivian’s expression remained still.
Daniel released Thomas.
“My father destroyed Clara’s records?”
“He ordered the fire,” Thomas said. “He intended to erase the failed subjects and preserve only the viable research.”
Mary began crying silently.
“I found Clara in a containment room. She was four years old. I took her through a service tunnel before the fire reached the east wing.”
“And you gave her to Mary?”
“We had been trying to have a child. I told Mary that Clara’s parents had died.”
“You lied to both of them.”
“I thought the truth would put them in danger.”
Vivian’s voice came through the intercom beside the doors.
“And it did.”
Daniel turned.
“You found Clara.”
“I never stopped looking.”
“Why?”
“Because she was the only subject who remained stable after the implants were removed.”
Dr. Ortiz stiffened.
“Clara had these capsules?”
“As a child,” Thomas said. “I removed most of them.”
“Most?”
Thomas stared at the floor.
“One was too close to her carotid artery.”
Daniel felt sick.
“Does Clara still have it?”
“Yes.”
Vivian raised the leather folder.
“And Sophie inherited the same biological response.”
Daniel looked toward the operating room.
“No.”
Thomas stood.
“The capsules were not implanted merely because she was Clara’s daughter.”
“What does that mean?”
Before Thomas could answer, the hospital lights went out.
Emergency power activated two seconds later.
Red lights filled the corridor.
A scream came from the operating room.
Daniel ran toward the doors.
Dr. Ortiz entered her security code, but the panel rejected it.
The intercom crackled.
A distorted voice spoke through every ceiling speaker.
“Subject Twelve has awakened.”
Daniel looked through the operating-room window.
Sophie was sitting upright on the table.
May you like
Her eyes were open.
Every monitor around her displayed the same three-circle symbol.
