Chapter 6 - THE MEMORY THEY BURIED
Dr. Leonard pushed Jason aside and pointed the syringe at my neck.
“Where is the memory card?”
I said nothing.
My father strained against his restraints.
“Leave her alone.”
Leonard smiled.
“You built the system.”
“And I destroyed it.”
“No. You hid it.”
Leonard grabbed my jaw.
“Inside her.”
The syringe needle touched my skin.
Jason caught his arm.
“You told me the fetus carried the sequence.”
“The pregnancy activated it.”
“What does that mean?”
Leonard looked irritated.
“Thomas embedded the encryption key within Emily’s altered neural response when she was a child. Pregnancy hormones restored the suppressed memory.”
I stared at my father.
“You experimented on me?”
His eyes filled with shame.
“I was trying to keep the files from them.”
“You used your daughter.”
“I believed hiding the sequence in your memory was the only way to save you.”
I laughed once.
A broken sound.
“Save me?”
He looked at my bruises.
“I failed.”
Leonard injected something into my arm.
The room blurred.
My father shouted.
Jason struck Leonard across the face.
The syringe fell.
I slipped from the chair onto my knees.
Images flashed behind my eyes.
A laboratory.
My mother whispering numbers.
My father placing headphones over my ears.
A red blinking light.
The same light on the baby monitor.
My mother saying, “Remember the song, not the code.”
Then fire.
Screaming.
Jason lifted me.
“Stay awake.”
I looked at him through the haze.
“Why do you care?”
His face tightened.
“I need you alive.”
The honest answer hurt more than a lie.
Gunfire echoed in the corridor.
Federal agents had entered the level.
Leonard grabbed a pistol from beneath the surgical tray.
My father kicked the chair backward into him.
The gun fired.
The bullet struck Jason in the shoulder.
He screamed and dropped me.
Ross burst through the door with two agents.
“Drop the weapon!”
Leonard fired again.
Ross returned fire.
Leonard collapsed behind the operating table.
Jason crawled toward the door.
Agent Hayes, his wounded shoulder bandaged, appeared in the corridor and kicked the gun away from him.
“Not this time.”
Ross freed my father.
I remained on the floor, struggling to breathe.
The drug was pulling at my consciousness.
My baby kicked violently.
My father crawled toward me.
“Emily, listen.”
“You don’t get to call me that.”
“I know.”
His voice broke.
“But the sequence is returning.”
“What sequence?”
“The access phrase.”
The baby monitor in my hand began playing music.
A lullaby.
My mother had sung it every night before the fire.
The melody unlocked something inside me.
Words surfaced.
Not numbers.
Names.
Locations.
Account codes.
A list of government officials connected to the stolen defense program.
I whispered the first name.
Ross heard it.
His expression changed.
“That man is the deputy director of national intelligence.”
My father nodded.
“The conspiracy goes beyond Leonard.”
The lights died.
A voice came through the surgical-room speaker.
“Agent Ross, terminate every witness.”
Ross looked up.
I recognized the voice.
May you like
It belonged to the man who had signed my father’s death certificate.
FBI Deputy Director Charles Kane.
