Chapter 6 - Subject Forty-SevenThe doors locked simultaneously.
Every electronic bolt inside the medical facility engaged with a heavy metallic sound.
Gabriel’s men raised their weapons.
Dante moved immediately toward Clara.
The speaker continued.
“Please do not waste ammunition upon the doors. They were designed for psychiatric containment.”
Gabriel looked toward the ceiling camera.
“Elias Voss.”
A quiet laugh responded.
“You sound disappointed.”
“I expected a man with enough courage to appear personally.”
“Courage is a romantic concept created by people who survive poor decisions.”
Gabriel lifted his pistol and shot the camera.
The lens shattered.
The speaker continued unaffected.
Voss had expected that.
Clara looked toward Grace.
“She needs a hospital.”
“She is receiving excellent care,” Voss replied.
“You poisoned her.”
“I treated her.”
“With what?”
“Something you are not qualified to understand.”
Clara stepped beneath the speaker.
“I understand a patient who cannot breathe.”
Silence.
Then Voss sounded amused.
“Dr. Gable always said you were emotional.”
“Dr. Gable is dead.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer confirmed everything.
Gabriel searched the room.
“Matteo.”
The security chief examined the walls.
“Emergency release should be mechanical.”
Two men began removing a panel beside the door.
Dante remained beside Clara.
The effort at St. Jude’s had worsened the weakness inside his left leg.
He leaned heavily upon the cane.
Clara noticed.
Of course she did.
“Sit.”
“Not now.”
“Dante.”
“Later.”
Before she could argue, the wall monitor activated.
An image appeared.
Lena.
Clara stopped.
The woman sat inside a white room.
Her dark hair reached her shoulders.
A narrow scar crossed 1 eyebrow.
She appeared exhausted but conscious.
“Lena.”
The woman looked toward the camera.
“Clara?”
The single word nearly broke her.
Clara approached the monitor.
“I am here.”
Lena began crying.
“Oh my God.”
Clara pressed her palm against the screen.
For an instant, she was 11 years old again, holding the hand of the only girl who had defended her inside Mercy House.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
Voss’s voice returned.
“Subject 47 has been extraordinarily difficult to recover.”
Dante’s face became murderous.
“She has a name.”
“Names are administratively useful, Mr. Falcone. Scientifically, numbers are cleaner.”
Clara stared upward.
“What do you want?”
“At last.”
The monitor changed.
Documents appeared.
Medical research.
Patient numbers.
Brain scans.
“Bellweather discovered something unusual among a very small percentage of subjects,” Voss explained.
Certain people remained cognitively aware under drug combinations that should produce deep sedation or muscular paralysis.
Researchers believed the phenomenon might help improve anesthesia monitoring.
Then intelligence organizations recognized another application.
A conscious prisoner could appear unconscious.
An unconscious witness could hear conversations without anyone knowing.
A patient could be made incapable of movement while remaining mentally intact.
Dante went completely still.
Clara looked toward him.
Voss continued.
“Your Mr. Falcone became an accidental demonstration.”
Dante’s voice dropped.
“You knew Gable was paralyzing me.”
“I knew.”
Clara’s disgust became physical.
“You knew he could hear us.”
“I suspected.”
“And you allowed it.”
“His neurological responses were fascinating.”
Dante lifted the cane and struck the monitor.
The screen cracked but remained illuminated.
Clara caught his arm.
Voss laughed softly.
“Anger. Excellent motor recovery.”
Gabriel looked toward the speaker.
“You have approximately 5 minutes before my people open these doors.”
“Four minutes and 37 seconds, actually.”
Gabriel’s men stopped.
A soft hiss came from the ventilation system.
Clara smelled nothing.
That terrified her.
“Cover your mouths.”
Voss spoke immediately.
“It is not toxic.”
Clara looked toward Grace’s monitor.
Her oxygen saturation remained stable.
Dante swayed.
Clara caught him.
“Dante?”
His pupils had changed.
Sedation.
“They are putting something through the vents.”
Gabriel pulled his jacket across his face.
Clara dragged Dante toward the floor.
His cane slipped away.
“I am fine.”
“No, you are not.”
His speech had already slowed.
Gabriel shouted toward his men.
“BREACH IT.”
Metal screamed at the door.
Lena’s image remained upon the monitor.
“Clara,” she said urgently.
“Listen.”
Clara looked up.
“Voss wants you alive.”
“Why?”
“Because you reacted too.”
Clara froze.
“What?”
“At Mercy House.”
The room tilted.
Lena continued.
“You remember the examinations?”
“Yes.”
“You never fell asleep.”
Clara’s mouth opened.
A memory returned.
A cold table.
A mask over her face.
A doctor saying, increase it.
Clara hearing everything.
Unable to move.
She had believed it was a nightmare.
Lena cried.
“That is why I held your hand afterward.”
Clara remembered.
She had awakened with Lena beside her.
Except she had never truly been unconscious.
Voss’s voice entered.
“You and Subject 47 were the most promising children in the program.”
Dante tried to rise.
Clara forced him down.
“You will not touch her.”
His words were slurred but furious.
Voss ignored him.
“Lena escaped before testing was complete. Clara entered another foster placement and disappeared through bureaucratic error.”
“So you lost us,” Clara said.
“For a time.”
The door finally broke.
Fresh air entered.
Gabriel’s men dragged everyone into the corridor.
Clara kept Dante upright.
His body had become dangerously weak.
The drug was affecting him faster because of his previous neurological injury.
“We need outside air now.”
They moved.
The building’s electronic locks began releasing 1 by 1.
Too easy.
Gabriel understood.
“He is letting us leave.”
Voss’s voice followed through speakers along the hallway.
“Yes.”
Gabriel stopped.
“Why?”
“Because you have something I require.”
Clara knew before he said it.
“Me.”
Dante attempted to turn.
“No.”
Voss continued.
“And I have something Clara requires.”
Lena’s image appeared upon another monitor.
“An exchange.”
Clara looked toward the screen.
“No.”
Lena shouted.
“Do not do it.”
Voss muted her.
“Twenty-four hours. I will send instructions.”
The speakers went silent.
Outside, emergency medical personnel loyal toward Gabriel treated Grace and Dante.
Clara sat beside Dante inside the armored ambulance.
Oxygen flowed beneath his nose.
The sedative had begun leaving his system, but his muscles remained weak.
He watched Clara continuously.
“You are thinking about it.”
She did not pretend otherwise.
“He has Lena.”
“No.”
“You know I cannot leave her.”
“No.”
“She was 13 when they took her.”
“No.”
Dante tried to sit upright.
His arms trembled.
Clara helped him.
He grabbed her wrist.
“I spent 8 months unable to move while people discussed my death around me.”
His voice was weak but intense.
“I know exactly what it means to be trapped.”
“Then you understand.”
“I understand why you want to go.”
He pulled her closer.
“I also understand that Voss has spent 16 years trying to recover you.”
Clara’s eyes filled.
“I cannot save myself by abandoning her.”
“You are not abandoning anyone.”
“How?”
Dante looked toward the front of the ambulance where Gabriel sat speaking into multiple phones.
“We take her back.”
Clara almost laughed from exhaustion.
“You can barely sit upright.”
“Then I will recover.”
“Within 24 hours?”
“If necessary.”
She stared toward him.
Dante’s expression softened.
“You taught me something inside Room 412.”
“What?”
“That helpless does not mean defeated.”
He placed her hand against his chest.
“You stood over me with a scalpel against a gun because it was the only weapon you had.”
A faint smile entered his face.
“We have considerably more than a scalpel now.”
Back at Beacon Hill, Gabriel transformed the mansion into a command center.
Every company connected toward Voss Biomedical was examined.
Aircraft.
Properties.
Research facilities.
Private islands.
Shell corporations.
Political donations.
Then Clara discovered the detail everyone else missed.
Lena’s recent photograph.
She enlarged it.
Upon the wall behind Lena was a medical-gas outlet.
Beside it, partially visible, a manufacturer’s inspection sticker.
Clara recognized the format.
“Massachusetts.”
Gabriel looked.
“These stickers are state specific.”
Matteo searched licensed facilities using the equipment brand and inspection year.
Thirty-seven matches.
Too many.
Clara studied Lena’s image again.
A reflection showed water.
Large windows.
A lighthouse.
She whispered.
“Cape Ann.”
Dante looked toward her.
“What?”
“Mercy House used to take us on summer trips.”
She remembered Lena loving the ocean.
The facility had intentionally placed her somewhere isolated.
There were only 3 licensed private medical properties near lighthouses upon Cape Ann.
Two were operating clinics.
The third had closed 7 years earlier.
Its owner was a shell company connected toward Voss Biomedical.
Gabriel stood.
“We found her.”
Clara looked toward the clock.
Nineteen hours remained before the exchange.
Dante pushed himself upright from the sofa.
His legs shook.
Clara immediately moved toward him.
He raised 1 hand.
“Do not.”
She stopped.
Dante reached for the cane.
Then changed his mind.
He placed both hands upon the table.
Slowly, painfully, he stood without it.
One second.
Two.
Three.
His left knee trembled.
Clara held her breath.
Dante took 1 step.
Then another.
He nearly fell upon the third.
Clara caught him.
He laughed against her shoulder.
Not because he had failed.
Because he had taken the steps.
Gabriel watched silently.
Dante looked toward his brother.
“Tomorrow, we bring Lena home.”
Gabriel nodded.
Then his phone sounded.
A message.
He opened it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Clara asked.
Gabriel turned the screen.
It showed live surveillance from inside Clara’s bedroom.
Someone had again entered the private floor.
Upon her pillow rested a black envelope.
Matteo went pale.
“That room has been sealed since we left.”
Gabriel looked around the command center.
Dozens of his own people stood inside it.
Voss could not have entered Beacon Hill twice without help.
May you like
The enemy was no longer outside the walls.
Someone inside the Falcone family was opening the door.
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