CHAPTER 9 — The Final Experiment
Two weeks later...
Adrian, Elena, Noah, and a multinational task force arrived in Switzerland.
The address on the note led them high into the Alps.
There stood an enormous medical research center officially listed as a neurological rehabilitation institute.
Patients from around the world came there hoping to walk again.
The irony made Adrian sick.
Underground...
It was something entirely different.
The facility was evacuated before dawn.
Agents descended six levels beneath the mountain.
What they found stunned even veteran investigators.
Rows of cryogenic chambers.
Thousands of confidential medical records.
Artificial intelligence systems tracking human genetic profiles.
And photographs...
Hundreds of photographs.
Missing children.
Including children who had vanished only months earlier.
Then Adrian stopped walking.
One photograph showed himself.
Not today.
Twenty-two years ago.
The label beneath it read:
"Subject A-01."
He frowned.
"I wasn't supposed to survive the accident..."
An elderly scientist, cornered by investigators, slowly nodded.
"No."
"You weren't."
"The spinal injury wasn't punishment."
"It was observation."
Adrian felt the blood drain from his face.
"What do you mean?"
The scientist swallowed.
"You and Elena carried a rare genetic mutation."
"It allowed unusually rapid nerve regeneration."
"When Noah inherited both genetic lines..."
"...he became the only successful subject."
Everyone turned toward the little boy.
Noah looked completely calm.
He had always known.
"My mother told me there would come a day when I'd learn why I could heal."
Elena stared at him in shock.
"You knew?"
He nodded.
"I just didn't know how much."
The scientist whispered one final sentence.
"Margaret doesn't want Noah dead."
"She wants him alive."
"Because he's the key to everything."
Suddenly...
Every alarm inside the mountain facility erupted.
On every monitor appeared the same message.
May you like
WELCOME, NOAH.
THE FINAL PHASE BEGINS NOW.
