Chapter 5 - THE DEVICE
Officer Ramirez from clinic security entered while Dr. Carter kept both babies under observation.
Bradley refused to empty his pockets.
Ramirez stepped closer.
“Sir, place everything on the table.”
“You have no authority.”
“This is a medical emergency.”
Bradley looked toward the door.
Ramirez blocked him.
Slowly, Bradley removed his wallet, keys, and phone.
The blue light continued blinking.
“Other pocket,” Ramirez said.
Bradley’s jaw tightened.
He removed a small black device no larger than a car key.
Dr. Lisa held up a radiation scanner.
The device emitted a low-frequency signal.
Dr. Carter shut it off.
Both fetal heart rates began recovering within seconds.
Tiffany ripped off the oxygen mask.
“You were hurting them.”
Bradley scoffed.
“It was a monitor.”
“For what?”
He said nothing.
Dr. Carter placed the device inside a metal specimen box.
“It was interacting with something implanted.”
I stared at him.
“Implanted where?”
He looked at my abdomen.
My blood went cold.
Lisa checked my medical scans.
A tiny object appeared near the placenta.
The same object appeared in Tiffany.
Neither had been documented during routine prenatal care.
Margaret stood abruptly.
“I told you to stop this.”
Bradley’s face hardened.
“You told me to finish what Father started.”
“I was wrong.”
“No. You were scared.”
He looked toward Dr. Carter.
“All of you are scared because it worked.”
“What worked?” I asked.
Bradley smiled.
“The children responded to the signal.”
I moved toward him.
Dr. Carter stopped me gently.
Bradley continued.
“Do you know how valuable that is? Two unborn children with synchronized neurological responses.”
Tiffany began sobbing.
I felt nothing.
Not yet.
The rage was too large.
It had become cold.
“You experimented on your own children.”
Bradley’s smile faded.
“They aren’t mine.”
The room went silent.
He looked first at Tiffany.
Then at me.
“The donor was chosen for a reason.”
Margaret whispered, “Don’t.”
Bradley ignored her.
“The biological father was a decorated soldier with unusual neural resilience.”
Dr. Carter opened the restricted donor file again.
This time Margaret gave him a handwritten password.
The profile loaded.
Captain Ethan Walker.
Killed in Afghanistan nine years earlier.
The photograph appeared.
My lungs stopped working.
I knew him.
Before Bradley.
Before the marriage.
Before the bruises.
Ethan had been the man I loved at twenty-five.
The man whose death had broken me.
Bradley watched my face.
“Yes,” he said softly. “That Ethan.”
I grabbed the edge of the bed.
“You used his genetic material.”
Bradley stepped closer.
“He left more than you knew.”
My eyes burned.
Then Dr. Lisa opened another page in the donor record.
She stared at it.
“This file doesn’t say deceased.”
Bradley’s expression finally cracked.
May you like
The status had been updated three days earlier.
SUBJECT RECOVERED.
