CHAPTER 5 — The Face on the Screen
Every investigator crowded around the aging monitor.
Static flickered.
The image sharpened.
A woman in an elegant white coat walked into the laboratory.
Her face appeared clearly.
Elena stopped breathing.
"No..."
"It can't be..."
Adrian stared in disbelief.
The woman wasn't a stranger.
She had attended his wedding.
She had held Noah as a newborn—at least, that was what everyone had believed.
She had even spoken at Elena's memorial.
Dr. Catherine Ross.
The hospital director.
For twenty-two years she had been celebrated as the heroic physician who supposedly died trying to rescue patients during the fire.
The world had mourned her.
Statues had been built in her honor.
Medical scholarships carried her name.
Yet there she was...
Alive.
Healthy.
Calmly giving orders.
The recording captured every word.
"Move Subject E immediately."
"Leave another body upstairs."
"The explosion begins in exactly one hundred twenty seconds."
The room fell into stunned silence.
An investigator whispered,
"She staged her own death."
Another officer searched government databases.
Nothing.
No passport.
No death certificate inconsistencies.
It was as though she had disappeared from history after the fire.
Then Noah quietly walked toward another dusty cabinet.
He touched the lock.
"It opens."
Inside lay a thick leather notebook.
Its pages were covered with Elena's handwriting.
She had secretly documented every experiment, every payment, every child who vanished.
Tucked inside the final page was a folded envelope addressed to Adrian.
She had written it twenty-two years earlier.
With shaking hands, he unfolded the letter.
"If you're reading this, it means I failed to come home."
"Don't waste your life looking for revenge."
"Find the children before they disappear like me."
Adrian couldn't stop crying.
The investigator gently placed a hand on his shoulder.
"We're reopening every missing-child case connected to this hospital."
Then one young detective ran into the room holding a tablet.
His face had gone pale.
"We just traced Catherine Ross."
"Someone used her biometric passport..."
"...three hours ago."
The destination flashed across the screen.
Private Terminal 7.
She wasn't dead.
She wasn't hiding.
May you like
She was trying to leave the country.
And she had only minutes before her plane took off.
