Chapter 6 - Someone Inside My House Was Watching
Prescott locked down the entire floor.
No elevators.
No stairwells.
No one entered.
No one left.
Every employee surrendered phones and access cards.
Security teams searched ceiling panels, service corridors, ventilation shafts, adjoining offices.
Nothing.
The photograph had been taken from an angle near the nurses’ station.
Yet cameras showed no unauthorized person standing there.
“That’s impossible,” Prescott said.
I had heard that word too often in the last twenty-four hours.
I no longer respected it.
“Then your cameras are compromised.”
He looked at me.
“Possibly.”
“Not possibly.”
He nodded.
“We rebuild security from scratch.”
“You have one hour.”
Elena sat beside Blythe.
I watched from the doorway.
Blythe was awake now.
“Did you know my mommy?” she asked.
Elena hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Was she funny?”
“Very.”
“Daddy says she danced bad.”
Elena smiled.
“She did.”
I stared at her.
Genevieve had danced terribly.
Beautiful woman.
Zero rhythm.
It was one of the private jokes of our marriage.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
Elena turned.
“She danced at St. Anne’s Christmas party.”
Fair enough.
Still, something about Elena bothered me.
Not because I believed she was dangerous.
Because she seemed connected to Genevieve in ways she hadn’t fully explained.
At one o’clock, Prescott returned.
“No device inside the room.”
“How was the picture taken?”
“One possibility.”
“What?”
“Optical capture from the building across the street.”
I went to the window.
Thirty stories below, Chicago moved normally.
Across the street stood a mixed-use tower.
“Search every line of sight.”
“We are.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Then a recording played.
Genevieve’s voice.
“Lawson?”
I nearly dropped the phone.
Her voice.
Two years since I had heard it.
Still instantly recognizable.
“Lawson, if you’re hearing this, things went worse than I hoped.”
The recording crackled.
“I need you to understand something about your father.”
Static.
Then—
“Conrad didn’t know what Novagen became.”
My breath caught.
“He funded the original work because of your mother. Elias Vane changed it after Conrad died.”
There it was.
A ghost clearing my father’s name.
At least partly.
Genevieve continued.
“But Elias did not act alone.”
A pause.
“There is someone near you who has worked with him for years.”
I turned toward Prescott.
He was watching me.
Genevieve’s voice continued.
“I don’t know how far it goes.”
Then the recording ended.
Immediately, a text appeared.
COME TO AURORA ALONE IF YOU WANT THE REST.
Prescott read it over my shoulder.
“No.”
“You don’t give orders.”
“I do when you’re about to walk into an obvious trap.”
“They have Genevieve’s recordings.”
“They may have stolen them.”
“Or Genevieve left them there.”
“Either way, alone is unacceptable.”
Elena approached.
“What happened?”
I played the recording.
By the end, she was crying.
“That’s her.”
“I know.”
“She made those messages.”
“Apparently.”
“Then she expected you to find them.”
Prescott disagreed.
“Or someone is using them to lure Lawson.”
Franklin entered before the argument went further.
His face told me something was wrong.
“What?”
“Blythe’s counts have collapsed.”
I looked toward the room.
“How bad?”
“Worse than yesterday.”
“How long?”
He took too long.
“How long?”
“Days may have been optimistic.”
Something shifted inside me.
I no longer had ten days.
Maybe not five.
Maybe not two.
“Would data from Project Lark help?”
“If they tracked treatments, possibly.”
“Then I’m going.”
Franklin grabbed my arm.
A surprising move.
“Listen to me. If you die walking into some facility, your children still need you.”
“They need information more.”
“They need both.”
I pulled free.
Prescott said, “I can send a team.”
“No. If there’s a kill switch or data destruction protocol, they’ll trigger it.”
“That’s speculation.”
“So is everything else.”
Elena stepped forward.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Genevieve chose me for a reason.”
“Which you still haven’t fully explained.”
Her face tightened.
“Fine.”
She looked around at all of us.
“You want the rest?”
“Yes.”
“My mother didn’t just participate in St. Anne’s research.”
She swallowed.
“She worked for Novagen.”
Silence.
“What?”
“She was a lab technician.”
“You said she was a patient.”
“She was both.”
“And you somehow forgot to mention that?”
“I was scared.”
“Of me?”
“Of what happens when powerful men realize someone knows too much.”
My anger returned.
“What did your mother do?”
“She processed genetic samples.”
“For Project Lark?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“She never used that name.”
“Then what did she tell you?”
“Before she died, she gave me a list of patient codes.”
Elena removed an old card from the lining of her coat.
Eleven numbers.
Eleven children.
Exactly the number Genevieve mentioned.
“Why hide this?”
“Because every person who had this information ended up dead.”
“That includes your mother?”
Elena looked down.
“She died eight years ago.”
“How?”
“Officially? Heart failure.”
“Unofficially?”
“She called me the night before. She said someone had discovered she copied records.”
Prescott took the card.
“This could prove Project Lark existed.”
“Not without the original database.”
I looked at Elena.
“Which is in Aurora.”
She nodded.
“Genevieve believed so.”
That settled it.
An hour later, we were on the road.
Not alone.
I compromised.
Prescott and a small team followed at a distance.
Elena sat in the passenger seat.
The Aurora property looked abandoned from the outside.
Gray warehouse.
No signage.
Minimal windows.
Genevieve’s recording had included a door code hidden in the metadata of the message.
We used it.
The lock opened.
Inside, the building was anything but abandoned.
Sterile corridors.
Laboratory glass.
Cold storage.
Server rooms.
We descended one level.
Then another.
Under Aurora.
Exactly as Genevieve had said.
At the bottom, we found a room containing rows of archived medical files.
Children’s names.
Birth dates.
Photographs.
Treatment histories.
I searched until I found them.
MERCER, JONAH.
MERCER, BLYTHE.
I opened Jonah’s file.
A line near the top froze me.
PROJECT LARK SUBJECT 10A.
Blythe was 10B.
Below that:
PREDICTED CLINICAL ONSET: AGE 5–8.
They had known.
Before my children had ever become sick.
Someone had known.
Then Elena whispered behind me.
“Lawson.”
I turned.
She was staring at another screen.
A video file.
GENEVIEVE MERCER — FINAL INTERVIEW.
The date was two weeks after the highway crash.
I pressed play.
My wife appeared.
Bruised.
Exhausted.
Alive.
She looked directly into the camera.
“If Lawson Mercer is watching this, then I failed.”
She took a breath.
“And Elias Vane is not the person you should fear most.”
The screen flickered.
Genevieve continued.
“The man controlling Project Lark is someone Lawson has trusted almost his entire adult life.”
May you like
A shadow crossed the glass behind us.
Then every door in the underground facility locked at once.
