Chapter 7 - The Bloodline Secret
Elijah walked over to Reed, taking the classified file labeled Subject Zero - Protocol Aegis.
"What is it, Marcus?"
"The initial human trials didn't start three years ago, Elijah," Reed said, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold the paper. "They started twenty-one years ago. In the old public clinic."
Elijah’s heart stopped. Twenty-one years ago was the year his daughter, Clara, died.
He snatched the file and flipped through the yellowed pages. Inside were medical charts from the night Clara died. The official cause of death on her public record had been listed as respiratory failure due to delayed medical care.
But the file in his hands told a horrifying truth.
Clara hadn't died of neglect. She had been injected with an experimental synthetic compound—the very first iteration of the drug Aegis Health was selling.
And at the bottom of the clinical trial authorization form from twenty-one years ago was a signature that made Elijah’s knees buckle.
It wasn't Arthur Vance's signature.
It was signed by Dr. Margaret Vance-Carter.
Elijah staggered backward, dropping the folder. The paper scattered across the floor like dead leaves. "No... no, that’s impossible. Margaret loved Clara! She died of grief after Clara passed!"
"Elijah, look at the notes," Reed said, grabbing Elijah's shoulders to steady him.
Elijah looked down at the handwritten marginalia in the margins of the report. It was his wife’s elegant handwriting. But as he read the words, his mind reeled:
"The board is forcing my hand. If I do not test the antidote on Clara, they will let the entire ward die. God forgive me. I am hiding the master override keys in my leather folder. If I do not survive, Elijah must find the truth..."
Elijah collapsed onto a plastic waiting chair, tears streaming down his face.
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Margaret hadn't built the hospital out of guilt or pure charity. She had built it as a fortress to hide the evidence against a massive shadow syndicate that had controlled the city's medical system for decades. And Arthur Vance was merely a middleman.
The real monster was still out there.
