Chapter 12 - THE CHILD THEY STOLE
The room tilted around me.
Matthew took one step forward.
Bradley caught his shoulder.
“Stay back.”
The boy flinched.
I looked at Dr. Vale.
“That is impossible.”
“No,” Vale said. “It is merely suppressed.”
He opened a medical file.
Fourteen years earlier, when I was twenty-one, I had been admitted after a car accident.
I remembered waking in a hospital with abdominal pain.
Doctors told me I had internal bleeding.
The file showed something else.
Emergency delivery.
Male infant.
Mother sedated.
Memory intervention authorized.
I looked at Matthew again.
His face blurred through my tears.
“They took you.”
He nodded.
“Grandfather said you died.”
Samuel.
Vale.
Bradley.
All of them had known.
Bradley tightened his grip on Matthew.
“The boy has a congenital immune disorder. He needs compatible stem cells.”
“That’s why you created the pregnancies,” Dr. Carter said.
“Two chances for a match,” Vale answered.
Tiffany screamed again.
Her fetal monitor dropped.
Dr. Carter moved toward her.
Bradley aimed the gun at him.
“Stop.”
“She and the baby are dying.”
“Then extract the child.”
“I will treat the mother first.”
Bradley’s face hardened.
“You sound just like Sarah.”
William met his eyes.
“Then perhaps she is the only decent person in this room.”
Matthew suddenly twisted free.
He ran toward me.
Bradley grabbed for him.
Ethan tackled Bradley from the side.
The gun fired.
Dr. Vale fell.
The bullet struck his abdomen.
Chaos erupted.
Dr. Carter cut Tiffany’s restraints.
Officer Ramirez fought Bradley for the weapon.
I pulled Matthew behind the operating table.
He clung to me.
I did not know how to hold a fourteen-year-old son I had met thirty seconds earlier.
So I held him like the baby they had stolen.
Vale pressed both hands to his wound.
“You need me.”
“No,” Dr. Carter said. “We need the records.”
Tiffany cried out.
Her baby’s heartbeat dropped again.
Dr. Carter examined her.
“We need an emergency delivery now.”
Lisa and the nurse arrived with police backup.
The surgical room filled with movement.
I stayed beside Tiffany’s head.
She looked at me.
“This is your baby.”
“No.”
I took her hand.
“You carried her. She knows your voice. You are her mother.”
Tears ran into Tiffany’s hair.
Bradley was dragged into the corridor in handcuffs.
He looked toward Matthew.
“Tell them who saved you.”
Matthew stared back.
“You never saved me.”
The surgical curtain lifted.
Dr. Carter began the emergency delivery.
Then every alarm in the underground ward activated.
Samuel’s voice came through the speakers.
“Containment breach.”
May you like
A timer appeared.
Facility purge in four minutes.
