Chapter 13 - Thirteen Remained
Emergency lights filled the conference hall with a dim red glow.
People screamed and pushed toward the locked exits.
I felt Vanessa’s hand close around mine.
“Stay down,” she said.
A gunshot cracked through the darkness.
Glass shattered.
My mother cried out.
I found her on the floor, but she was not wounded. The bullet had struck the stage behind her.
Detective Bennett’s officers forced open a side entrance.
Emily’s followers scattered through service corridors.
Emily herself vanished.
When the lights returned, a message covered the screen.
THE FIRST DOOR IS OPEN.
Police searched the building.
They found laboratories beneath the foundation headquarters containing equipment used for illegal neurological testing. Twelve patients were discovered in locked rooms, sedated and connected to monitoring systems.
Each patient had a black circle marked on the inside of the wrist.
Project Sable had continued.
Emily had not built the laboratories alone.
Financial records linked the foundation to pharmaceutical corporations, intelligence contractors, private military firms, and several government agencies.
But the servers began erasing themselves as soon as police entered.
Most of the data disappeared.
My mother was taken to a secure hospital.
Vanessa and I were placed in protective custody.
For three days, we stayed in a government apartment under guard while investigators attempted to locate Emily and the other surviving subjects.
Detective Bennett visited on the fourth morning.
“Elena Cole is dead,” she said.
Vanessa lowered her coffee.
“How?”
“Poisoned in her cell.”
“By Emily?”
“We don’t know.”
“Pike?”
“Also dead.”
The pattern was clear.
Someone was eliminating people connected to the old project.
“What about Adrian Vale?” I asked.
“No confirmed death certificate. No remains. No reliable sighting in fifteen years.”
“So he may still be alive.”
“Yes.”
Detective Bennett placed thirteen files on the table.
Each belonged to a surviving child from the final Sable trial.
I was Subject 2.
Emily was Subject 1.
Vanessa was Subject 3.
The remaining ten had taken new identities.
Subject 4 was now a federal judge.
Subject 5 directed a major technology company.
Subject 6 was a psychiatrist.
Subject 7 had served in military intelligence.
Subject 8 was listed as deceased, though Bennett doubted the record.
Subject 9 was a neuroscientist.
Subject 10 worked for the Vale Foundation.
Subject 11 had become a senator.
Subject 12 operated a private security organization.
Subject 13 had no name, photograph, or current identity.
“Why are so many of them powerful?” I asked.
“Perhaps because someone placed them in those positions,” Bennett said.
“For what purpose?”
“That’s what we need to discover.”
Vanessa opened her file.
Inside were childhood observation reports.
She read silently, then handed one page to me.
Subject 3 demonstrates unusually strong emotional attachment to Subject 2. When separated, both subjects exhibit increased resistance to memory suppression.
I read it twice.
“Our relationship was studied before we even understood what it was.”
Vanessa looked toward the window.
“Maybe that’s why Elena sent me to you.”
“Because our attachment could restore the memories?”
“Or because it could unlock the archive.”
Detective Bennett received a message.
Her face tightened.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The man seen inside your house during the conference has been identified.”
“Who is he?”
She turned the phone toward me.
The security image showed Robert Mercer.
Our estate manager.
The man we believed had been attacked by Samuel Pike.
“He lied,” Vanessa said.
“About everything,” Bennett replied.
Robert Mercer was not his real name.
His fingerprints matched a sealed military record belonging to Subject 7.
He had worked inside our home for nine years.
Watching.
Waiting.
Protecting the evidence or waiting to steal it.
We did not know which.
That afternoon, he called me.
“I can take you to the archive,” he said.
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Did you help Emily?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you help Elena?”
“Sometimes.”
“Who do you serve?”
There was a long silence.
“The child who never left the white room.”
“Subject 13?”
“Yes.”
“Who is Subject 13?”
Mercer lowered his voice.
“You are asking the wrong question.”
“Then what should I ask?”
May you like
“Ask why there are fourteen chairs in every photograph.”
The call ended.
