Chapter 6 - PATIENT ZEROChloe watched her mother's recording three times.
Each time, the words became more terrifying.
You were Patient Zero.
Victor knelt beside her.
“Chloe, listen to me. We don't know what that means yet.”
She pulled away.
“I've been healthy my entire life.”
Gabriel examined the files.
“Not according to these records.”
He displayed a document dated twenty-three years earlier.
Chloe's name appeared beside a series of experimental treatment codes.
“Your mother participated in the earliest phase of Mercy's program,” Gabriel explained. “But the records suggest she refused further procedures after Chloe developed a severe reaction.”
Chloe remembered something.
When she was little, she had sometimes awakened with unexplained fevers.
Her mother always stayed beside her bed.
She had dismissed those memories as ordinary childhood illness.
“Did my mother volunteer me?”
Victor looked at the video again.
“I don't think so.”
Gabriel found a second recording.
Rebecca sat beside a hospital window, her face exhausted.
“They told me Chloe would die without the treatment. I believed them. By the time I discovered what they were really doing, it was too late.”
Chloe began to cry.
Victor remained beside her, offering his hand without forcing her to take it.
After several minutes, she held it.
Then the tablet emitted an alert.
An incoming video call.
Elena Costello.
Victor answered.
Elena appeared in a dimly lit medical room.
Behind her, Liam lay motionless beneath a blanket.
Chloe lunged toward the screen.
“Liam!”
Elena lifted a hand.
“He's alive. But the senator's people have been changing his medication.”
“Then let him go!” Chloe demanded.
“I can't. Not until I have the complete Mercy archive.”
Victor stood.
“You have my attention. What do you want?”
Elena looked directly at him.
“The master ledger your father hid.”
Victor's face tightened.
“That ledger burned.”
“No,” Elena replied. “Someone removed it before the fire.”
“Who?”
Elena hesitated.
“Rebecca Bennett.”
Chloe stared at the screen.
“My mother is dead.”
Elena's expression changed.
“That's what Caldwell wanted everyone to believe.”
A door slammed somewhere behind her.
Elena turned sharply.
Before the connection ended, she whispered something that made Chloe's blood run cold.
May you like
“Your mother is alive.”
Then the screen went black.
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