Chapter 5 - Twenty-Seven Women
Claire spent that night at Lila’s apartment because Vale insisted neither woman should be alone.
Lila lived in a modest building near the train station. Her living room was crowded with plants and unopened mail. On the kitchen table, she spread printed records from Northbridge in careful rows.
Twenty-seven women.
Each had been diagnosed with infertility or genetic disorders that did not appear in their original lab data. In every case, the husband belonged to a wealthy family, controlled a significant business, or held a public position.
Some marriages ended in divorce. Some wives remained, believing they were unable to conceive. Three had undergone hysterectomies after false cancer warnings. One had died following complications from an unnecessary procedure.
Claire felt sick as she read.
“This is not only about protecting men from infertility,” she said.
“No,” Lila replied. “It is about inheritance.”
The altered diagnoses allowed families to remove wives from trusts, challenge prenuptial agreements, and justify donor pregnancies arranged through Northbridge. Children could be introduced into powerful families with chosen genetic backgrounds while everyone believed the husbands were biological fathers.
Claire looked at the files.
“Chosen by whom?”
“I never found out.”
Lila opened a spreadsheet. It listed patient names, dates, payments, and coded designations. Claire’s row contained the letters SABLE-14.
Madison’s contained SABLE-15.
“What does Sable mean?”
“I thought it was a donor program.”
“Thought?”
Lila pointed to another column. Every SABLE case involved women with rare immune markers. Claire and Madison shared one.
“You were selected years before Ethan met Madison,” Lila said.
“For what?”
“The program required one woman to be labeled infertile and removed. A second woman carried the child.”
Claire stared at the screen.
“Are you saying my marriage was used to prepare for Madison’s pregnancy?”
“I am saying your diagnosis may have been part of a longer plan.”
At midnight, Vale joined them by encrypted video call. He had received preliminary results from the infant’s second sample.
“The paternal profile again matches Julian Cross,” he said. “Not a relative. A direct match.”
“But he died nineteen years ago,” Claire said.
“Then stored material was used, or the man did not die.”
“Why Madison?”
Vale hesitated. “The child has a genetic modification.”
Neither woman spoke.
Vale explained carefully. A sequence associated with a severe hereditary disease had been edited. The change was too precise to be natural and matched an experimental protocol proposed by Julian Cross before his disappearance.
“That kind of embryo editing is illegal,” Claire said.
“In this country, yes. Northbridge may have performed the procedure elsewhere and implanted the embryo here.”
Lila went pale. “The Sable files.”
Vale nodded. “They may be trials.”
Claire looked again at the twenty-seven names.
In the days that followed, Claire returned repeatedly to the list of twenty-seven women. Their names ceased to look like rows in an investigation and became lives she could imagine in painful detail. There was Hannah Ortiz, a public defender whose husband’s family owned a chain of private hospitals. Hannah had been told at twenty-nine that pregnancy would endanger her heart. Her original records showed no heart disorder. There was Priya Desai, whose marriage survived twelve years of treatments before her husband discovered that Northbridge had discarded every sample he provided. There was Caroline Webb, who had adopted two children after being told she carried a lethal mutation. She did not carry it. Her husband did.
Claire called none of them. Not yet. Evidence had to be preserved before warnings could be sent, and Mara feared that premature contact would alert Northbridge. Still, Claire wrote each name in a notebook and left space beneath it. She wanted a record that did not reduce them to Sable numbers.
Lila watched her from across the table.
“You are making case notes.”
“No,” Claire said. “I am making sure someone remembers they were people before they became evidence.”
Lila lowered her eyes. “I remember all of them.”
“Then help me write what you remember.”
For the next two hours, Lila described voices, habits, and small moments. Hannah always brought peppermint tea. Priya asked the technician whether the blood draw would bruise because she had a court appearance. Caroline carried a photograph of the nursery she had painted yellow before receiving the false diagnosis.
The details made the crime larger, not smaller.
Ethan had betrayed Claire personally. Northbridge had industrialized the betrayal.
Before sleeping, Claire opened her old calendar from the years of treatment. Every appointment was marked in blue. Every failed cycle was marked in gray. On one date, she had written: Ethan says we must stay hopeful.
She crossed out the sentence.
Beneath it she wrote: Hope without truth is another method of control.
Then she closed the calendar and placed it beside Julian’s journal.
“How many children?”
“Unknown.”
A sound came from the hallway outside Lila’s apartment.
All three froze.
Someone slid an envelope beneath the door.
Claire approached slowly. Through the peephole, the corridor was empty.
The envelope contained a photograph of Ethan as a child standing beside Dr. Kessler and an older man Claire recognized as Ethan’s father, Richard Bennett.
On the back, someone had written:
Ethan was not their first infertile son.
Beneath the sentence was an address and a time.
10:00 a.m.
Come alone if you want to know who selected you.
Lila grabbed Claire’s arm. “You cannot go.”
Claire turned the photograph over again.
In the corner of the image, nearly hidden behind Richard Bennett, stood a young scientist with a scarless face.
Adrian Cross.
May you like
Claire understood then that the mystery had begun long before her marriage.
Perhaps before Ethan was born.
