Chapter 3 - They Planned My Daughter’s Birth Without Me
Tomorrow.
I stared at the screen until the word lost meaning.
My due date was six weeks away.
My daughter was healthy.
There was no medical reason to deliver her tomorrow.
Yet someone had approved a delivery window.
Without telling me.
Without consent.
Without my obstetrician.
Aaron Mercer ordered the corridor cleared of visitors.
St. Aurelia security moved faster now.
Not because Preston was powerful.
Because the hospital finally understood how dangerous the paperwork around me had become.
My fetal monitor kept recording.
My daughter’s heartbeat remained steady.
That sound became the only thing I trusted.
“I am not delivering tomorrow,” I said.
Miriam nodded immediately.
“No procedure will happen without your informed consent unless there is a genuine emergency threatening you or the baby.”
“Can Preston authorize it?”
“No.”
“Could he yesterday?”
Miriam hesitated.
That hesitation told me enough.
“Could he?”
“With the proxy documents entered into your outside chart and a physician willing to accept their validity, possibly.”
Preston stood behind the glass.
I looked at him.
He had spent months constructing a medical version of me that did not exist.
Confused.
Erratic.
Dangerous.
Unfit.
Then, when the paperwork was ready, Savannah created the public incident.
The waiting medics would take me to Hartwell Behavioral Health.
No visitors.
No calls.
No independent doctors.
Tomorrow, something would happen to my daughter.
And afterward?
Savannah had already answered that.
I would disappear.
“What exactly is Project Lark?” I asked.
Miriam turned toward Aaron.
“We need the remaining archive.”
“The main server copy is isolated,” he said. “But somebody knew we opened it.”
“Who has remote administrative access?”
“Six people.”
“Names.”
Aaron opened a tablet.
“Chief information officer. Deputy director. Medical compliance administrator. Archive administrator. Research director.”
He paused.
“And one legacy external credential.”
Miriam looked up.
“Whose?”
“The credential is thirty-two years old.”
My stomach tightened.
“What name?”
Aaron turned the screen.
ELIAS VALE.
Miriam’s face went white.
“That’s impossible.”
“Who is Elias Vale?” I asked.
“My brother.”
The room went quiet.
“Is he alive?”
Miriam looked at me.
“No.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-seven years.”
I almost laughed.
Another dead person accessing living records.
My mother’s signature.
Miriam’s brother’s credential.
A protocol designed before I was old enough to read.
This conspiracy had not begun with Preston.
He had inherited it.
Or discovered it.
“What did Elias do?”
“He worked with your mother.”
“In genetics?”
“Yes.”
“And he died?”
“In a laboratory fire.”
I looked toward the red folder.
“Did my mother die in the same fire?”
Miriam’s eyes lowered.
My chest tightened.
“My mother died in a car accident.”
“That is what you were told.”
The fetal monitor suddenly felt too loud.
I stared at Miriam.
“What are you saying?”
“Your mother was declared dead after a vehicle fire three months after Elias died.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
“You just said—”
“I said that’s what you were told.”
I stood.
The nurse tried to stop me.
I pulled off the monitor straps.
“Claire.”
“No.”
Miriam rose.
I pointed at the red folder.
“Open everything.”
“We should secure you first.”
“I have been secured, medicated, lied to, monitored, and nearly dragged into a psychiatric facility. I am done waiting for people to decide what I’m allowed to know.”
Miriam looked at Aaron.
He nodded.
The flash drive was transferred to an air-gapped laptop.
No network.
No wireless connection.
No outside deletion command.
Aaron opened the archive.
There were twenty-seven folders.
Most were encrypted.
Three unlocked under Protocol Seven.
The first contained the genetic research Miriam had described.
The second contained legal documents.
The third was labeled E.C.
My mother’s initials.
We opened it.
A video file appeared.
Date: October 4, 1994.
I was four years old.
Miriam clicked play.
My mother appeared on screen.
I forgot how to breathe.
I remembered photographs.
A few home videos.
Her laugh.
Her perfume.
The way she used to tuck my hair behind my ears.
But this was different.
She was looking directly into a camera.
Directly at me.
“If Claire is watching this,” she said, “then someone activated a maternal transfer protocol against her.”
My knees weakened.
Miriam pulled a chair toward me.
I sat.
My mother continued.
“Claire, I hoped you would never know this existed.”
Her face looked exhausted.
There was a bruise near her temple.
“I created Founder Protocol Seven because we discovered that our research had been compromised. Certain families were not interested in curing disease. They were interested in controlling access to compatible bloodlines.”
My hand covered my mouth.
“The Carrington maternal line is one of those bloodlines.”
She looked down briefly.
Then back into the camera.
“If anyone attempts to remove your medical autonomy, St. Aurelia must become your sanctuary.”
Behind me, Preston shouted something at security.
I ignored him.
My mother leaned toward the camera.
“You may be told that your value lies in what your body can produce. Do not believe them.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“You are not a carrier. You are not a donor line. You are not an asset.”
Savannah had called me an incubator.
Thirty-two years earlier, my mother had known someone might.
My mother’s voice softened.
“And if you have a daughter, protect her before you protect our name.”
The video glitched.
Then she added:
“There is one person you must never allow to control her medical records.”
The video froze.
Aaron tapped the keyboard.
“Corrupted.”
“Can you recover it?”
“Yes, but not instantly.”
“Who was she going to name?”
“I don’t know.”
Preston suddenly began yelling outside.
“I demand counsel.”
Aaron looked through the glass.
“You have counsel.”
“Not hospital counsel.”
Security had taken his phone but had not detained him formally.
Not yet.
We needed law enforcement.
I asked Aaron whether he had called them.
“Yes.”
“When will they arrive?”
“They’re already downstairs.”
Good.
Savannah sat apart from Preston now.
Her arms wrapped around herself.
She looked terrified.
I approached the glass.
“Savannah.”
She looked up.
I opened the door.
Security remained between us.
“You tried to make me fall.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I didn’t think you would fall that hard.”
“That is not an apology.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Her lips trembled.
“Because Preston said if everyone saw an episode, they could transfer you tonight.”
“And you believed him.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you want me gone?”
She looked at Preston.
Then at me.
“Because he told me you were dangerous.”
I almost laughed.
“He was sleeping with you.”
“Yes.”
“And you believed his medical assessment of me?”
Her face tightened.
“He showed me videos.”
“What videos?”
“You screaming. Breaking things. Threatening him.”
I stared.
I had never done those things.
“Show me.”
“My phone.”
Security retrieved it.
Savannah unlocked the device.
She opened a hidden album.
The first video showed me in our bedroom.
I was screaming.
My hair disheveled.
I threw a lamp.
I shouted at Preston.
Except something was wrong.
I watched again.
My voice.
My face.
My body.
But I had no memory of it.
Miriam leaned closer.
“Deepfake?”
Aaron shook his head.
“Maybe partially. But that looks like original footage.”
Then I understood.
“The sedatives.”
Preston had filmed me during the drugged episodes.
Edited them.
Cut everything before and after.
Created evidence for Savannah.
For doctors.
For anyone he needed.
There were twelve videos.
Each worse than the last.
In one, I said I hated my baby.
I began shaking.
“That never happened.”
Savannah looked at me.
“I thought it did.”
“You wanted my child.”
She lowered her eyes.
“I wanted Preston.”
“Same difference, apparently.”
“No.”
She looked up.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
Something in her expression changed.
“What?”
Savannah stared through the glass at Preston.
“He didn’t want the baby for himself.”
My skin went cold.
“Then for whom?”
“He said there was someone above him.”
Preston lunged toward the door.
Security stopped him.
“Savannah!”
She flinched.
I stepped closer.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“He never gave me a name.”
“What did he give you?”
“A location.”
Preston shouted again.
Savannah kept going.
“A private delivery suite.”
“Where?”
She swallowed.
“Hartwell Research Center.”
Miriam stared at her.
“That facility was shut down four years ago.”
“No,” Savannah whispered. “The public wing was.”
Aaron’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“What?”
He listened.
Then looked at me.
“We just received a security alert from your home.”
“My home?”
“Someone entered Preston’s study using his biometric credentials.”
Preston was standing ten feet away.
Aaron continued listening.
Then asked, “What did they take?”
My pulse thudded.
He slowly lowered the phone.
“The original Project Lark file.”
I stared at Preston.
May you like
He stared back.
Then every light in the hospital corridor went out.
