Chapter 4 - THE CHILD THEY CALLED G13
Federal agents reached the Virginia plant while smoke poured from the roof.
The fire was concentrated in the records wing, but the underground medical levels remained intact.
Vanessa was found inside a locked examination room.
Derek lay unconscious in a corridor with a head injury.
Grant had disappeared.
The blood-storage freezer remained cold.
The samples were recovered.
Vanessa’s unborn child had been assigned a research code before birth.
Subject G13.
The number indicated twelve pregnancies came before hers.
Nora traced Northbridge’s private prenatal program and identified twelve women connected to men from Grant’s family or former trial participants.
Some pregnancies ended in unexplained miscarriages.
Four children were alive.
Their parents believed they had ordinary immune disorders.
In reality, Northbridge had monitored them from birth.
Derek regained consciousness in federal custody.
His injury came from Grant striking him after he demanded money to leave the country.
Even then, Derek’s first instinct remained bargaining.
He offered information in exchange for immunity.
The government refused full protection but considered a reduced sentence.
He admitted marrying me under his father’s direction.
Grant promised him control of a large Northbridge trust if he had a child with me.
When Holly became sick at age five, Grant saw an opportunity to study how our genetic trait responded under stress.
“Did you know they caused her relapse?” I asked during a monitored interview.
Derek stared at the table.
“I knew they were changing her medication.”
“That is yes.”
“I thought it was temporary.”
“You watched her lose her hair.”
“I didn’t know it would get that bad.”
“You told me she had enjoyed enough life.”
His face tightened.
“I was angry.”
“No. You were honest.”
He wanted Holly’s trust for the son he expected with Vanessa.
Grant had promised that child would inherit Northbridge.
Derek saw one sick daughter as a poor investment and one unborn son as a profitable replacement.
I removed my wedding ring and placed it on the table.
“I hope every year you spend in prison feels longer than the eight years Holly fought to stay alive.”
I filed for divorce that afternoon.
Vanessa requested to see me.
I refused until she agreed to a complete statement.
She confessed to administering the compound six times.
Grant told her it would temporarily reduce Holly’s treatment response and make me abandon the Boston protocol.
He paid off her credit-card debt and promised a home, a job, and security for her son.
“Did you believe him?” I asked.
“I wanted to.”
“You wanted his promises more than Holly’s safety.”
“Yes.”
It was the first truthful answer she gave.
Vanessa also admitted Sloane—no, that was another betrayal from another story. In ours, Vanessa herself had forged my signature on forms authorizing Northbridge to collect Holly’s blood.
She practiced using old birthday cards.
Derek notarized the forms through a company employee.
The signatures allowed Northbridge to claim the samples were obtained legally.
Calvin challenged every authorization.
The court froze Northbridge’s patent portfolio and appointed an independent medical trustee.
That action made headlines.
Grant responded through a video released online.
He stood before the Northbridge logo and described himself as a scientist facing political persecution.
He called the compounds experimental support medication.
He called the frozen samples corporate property.
He called Holly an important contributor to future cures.
He never called her a child.
Then he displayed confidential medical data suggesting the Boston treatment would fail.
Dr. Patel reviewed it.
“The data is altered.”
But the release caused investors to panic.
Northbridge stock collapsed.
Grant used the chaos to transfer assets offshore.
Calvin had anticipated it.
The original loan documents gave Holly’s trust a claim against Northbridge’s hidden intellectual property if the company engaged in fraud affecting her care.
Derek had unknowingly signed those papers as a corporate officer.
The trust now had legal grounds to seize the patents.
Grant called me personally.
“You think you have won because a judge froze accounts?”
“No. I think Holly is alive.”
“Temporarily.”
I gripped the phone.
“Was that a threat?”
“It was a medical assessment.”
“Then provide it under oath.”
He hung up.
Nora traced the call to a private research center in Maine.
Agents raided it.
Grant was already gone.
But they found Samuel Park, the missing technician who called me during the flight.
He was alive, injured, and held inside a basement room.
Samuel confirmed Grant ordered my mother’s death.
Eleanor had placed copies of the stolen patent evidence inside a safe-deposit box.
Grant’s security chief forced her car off the mountain road before she could reach federal investigators.
The security chief later died in a suspicious hunting accident.
Grant erased everyone who knew.
Samuel survived because he copied the original trial records and hid them.
“Where are the copies?” Nora asked.
Samuel looked at me.
“Your mother gave them to Calvin Rhodes.”
Calvin had never mentioned them.
I confronted him immediately.
He closed his office door and removed a key from his pocket.
“The records are inside Holly’s trust vault.”
“You knew Grant killed my mother?”
“I suspected. I could not prove it.”
“You had trial files.”
“I had encrypted data.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Eleanor made me promise to wait until Holly’s trust was threatened.”
I felt betrayed again.
Everyone believed withholding truth was a form of protection.
“Why would my mother make that condition?”
“Because the vault does not open only with the key.”
“What else does it require?”
“Holly’s biological signature.”
My daughter’s blood.
Grant had spent years trying to obtain the same thing.
The original records could convict him and release the stolen medical technology.
But opening the vault would expose Holly’s genetic profile permanently.
Once again, adults had placed a world-changing decision inside a child’s body.
I looked at Calvin.
“No one touches her without understanding exactly what this means.”
He nodded.
“That is why Eleanor chose you as guardian.”
But that night, while Holly slept, the hospital lost power.
Backup generators activated within seconds.
When the lights returned, Captain Bun was gone.
So was the small bandage from Holly’s latest blood draw.
May you like
Someone had stolen fresh blood from the disposal container.
Grant no longer needed our permission to open the vault.
