Chapter 17 - THE CHILD THOMAS CHOSE
Daniel reached the stairs first.
Lucy stood outside Winnie's bedroom.
Winnie was beside her.
Both girls were safe.
Elizabeth held a small black object in her hand.
"I found this under Lucy's coat."
Brooks took it.
A tracking device.
Sarah closed her eyes.
"That is how Adrian followed them."
Elizabeth looked at her mother.
"He let us go because he wanted us to come here."
"Yes."
"Then why did you follow us?"
"Because I knew he would."
Elizabeth's anger returned.
"You seem to know a lot for someone who disappeared for twenty eight years."
Sarah accepted the accusation.
Daniel did not have time for their family history.
"Start with 1984."
Sarah sat at the dining table.
The same table beneath which generations of secrets had been buried.
"I was twenty years old. I was finishing my nursing training."
Eleanor stared.
"You were the nurse in the photograph."
"Student nurse."
"Why were you in my room?"
"Thomas requested me."
Daniel frowned.
"Why?"
"Because of my mother."
"Helen Mercer."
Sarah nodded.
"Helen joined an experimental fertility program in the early sixties. She had suffered several miscarriages. The doctors were studying a rare pattern in her immune system."
"Project Haven?"
"It did not have that name yet."
Sarah continued.
"My mother eventually had me."
Years later, Helen entered the program again.
A second pregnancy followed.
Rebecca.
Daniel stared.
"Rebecca was your sister."
"Half sister."
"Not your twin."
Sarah almost smiled.
"I was twenty years older than Rebecca."
Eleanor whispered, "Then the photograph—"
"Fake."
"The two babies?"
"One was Rebecca. The other was another infant from the nursery. Someone created the photograph years later."
"Why?"
"To make H17 and H18 look like two children from the same trial."
Daniel remembered Vale's words.
There were never two infants.
"What was H18?"
"Me."
Sarah looked ashamed.
"I was not simply observing the program. I was part of it."
After Sarah was born, doctors continued testing her blood for years.
When she began working at the hospital, Thomas Hale recognized her name.
"He recruited you."
"He told me Haven could prevent miscarriages."
"And you believed him?"
"For a while."
That night in 1984, three things happened.
Eleanor gave birth to Daniel.
Helen Mercer gave birth to Rebecca in another wing of the hospital.
And Thomas quietly assigned both newborns to Project Haven.
Daniel looked sick.
"My father enrolled me without my mother's knowledge."
"Yes."
Eleanor covered her mouth.
Sarah continued.
"At 2:17 in the morning, Thomas changed Daniel's classification from ordinary control to D01."
"Why?"
"Because preliminary blood work showed something he wanted to compare with the Mercer line."
"What?"
Sarah shook her head.
"We did not know then."
"What happened to Rebecca?"
"Helen was ill after delivery. Thomas arranged a private adoption."
Eleanor looked horrified.
"Without the mother?"
"Helen signed papers while sedated. Years later she claimed she did not understand what she had signed."
Sarah had carried infant Rebecca from the hospital to the placement office herself.
That was the second baby Vale had mentioned.
The baby Sarah left the hospital carrying.
Rebecca.
"I spent the next fifteen years trying to learn where she went."
"You found her?"
"In 1998."
Daniel remembered Sybil's statement.
Sarah disappeared in 1998.
"What happened?"
"Adrian Vale found me first."
The room became silent.
Sarah explained that Vale had begun working with Thomas years earlier.
Thomas built Haven.
Vale protected it.
When Thomas needed records altered, Vale altered them.
When a family asked too many questions, Vale frightened them.
When Sarah discovered that Haven was following the children into adulthood, she threatened to expose them.
Vale responded by showing Sarah a photograph.
Elizabeth leaving school.
Age three.
"I disappeared the next morning."
Elizabeth stared at her mother.
"You abandoned me."
"I thought I was saving you."
"Everyone in this family keeps saying that."
Daniel looked at Eleanor.
The sentence hurt because it was true.
Sarah lowered her eyes.
"I was wrong."
Elizabeth said nothing.
Daniel returned to the question that mattered.
"What was Haven looking for?"
Sarah looked toward Brooks.
"Thomas believed the Mercer immune profile could be inherited."
"Why was that valuable?"
"It was unusually tolerant."
"Meaning?"
"Certain Mercer descendants could accept biological material that most people's bodies rejected."
Brooks frowned.
"Transplantation?"
"That was the original research."
"And later?"
Sarah looked toward Lucy.
"Later, private companies realized the same biology could make certain cell lines extremely valuable."
Elizabeth pulled Lucy closer.
"You are saying my daughter is valuable because of her blood?"
Sarah shook her head.
"I am saying Adrian Vale believes she is."
Winnie spoke softly.
"What about me?"
Sarah looked at her.
"Rebecca carried part of the same profile."
"Do I have it?"
"I do not know."
Daniel looked at the torn page.
"Why was my observation classified with theirs?"
Sarah answered.
"Because Thomas wanted to know what would happen if the Mercer line had a child with D01."
Daniel's face changed.
Rebecca.
Winnie.
Sarah saw him understand.
"Rebecca did not marry you by accident."
Daniel stood.
"No."
Sarah's eyes filled with sadness.
"That is what she was trying to tell you before she died."
Then Brooks's phone rang.
He answered.
His expression hardened.
"What?"
Everyone watched him.
He lowered the phone.
"The tracking device is not the only problem."
Daniel waited.
May you like
Brooks looked at Lucy.
"Someone accessed her federal protection file fourteen minutes ago."
