“Victor!”
Detective Chen’s voice exploded from the speaker just as the elevator doors closed.
I ran.
Sarah called my name behind me, but by then I had reached the corridor.
A security officer came from the opposite direction.
“Hold that elevator!”
Too late.
The numbers above the doors descended.
Eight.
Seven.
Six.
The officer hit his radio.
“Suspect in physician coat, elevator bank C. Lock down lobby and parking access.”
I stared at the descending numbers.
Five.
Four.
Then they stopped.
“Fourth floor.”
The officer sprinted toward the stairwell.
I followed.
“Mr. Caldwell, stay here.”
“No.”
“This is a police matter.”
“He has spent twenty-five years turning my wife into a research subject.”
“Former wife,” Sarah called from behind us.
I turned.
She was standing in her doorway with Mara beside her.
Even now.
Even now she corrected me.
I nearly laughed.
Instead I pointed at the bed.
“Get back inside.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I lost twenty-five years. I’m not losing the next ten minutes because you told me to sit.”
Mara caught her elbow.
“You’re not running stairs.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Another security officer arrived with a wheelchair.
Sarah looked offended.
“Absolutely not.”
I stared at her.
She stared back.
Then she sat.
“Only because Ethan is annoying.”
The officer pushing her said, “I’m staying out of that.”
We reached the fourth floor by a different elevator.
Chen had already arrived.
Her weapon remained holstered, but her posture had changed completely.
“Camera lost him.”
“How?”
“Service corridor.”
Mara frowned.
“Fourth floor connects to old research labs.”
Nathan’s former territory.
Victor’s too.
Chen looked at hospital security.
“Seal every exit.”
The hallway smelled faintly of disinfectant and dust.
Several rooms had been closed for renovation.
Plastic covered doorways.
Construction equipment sat stacked against a wall.
Perfect hiding places.
Perfect routes.
Sarah whispered, “He chose this floor.”
“Yes.”
“He knows it.”
“Yes.”
“And everyone is chasing him exactly where he wants.”
Chen heard.
“What makes you say that?”
“He walked slowly.”
I looked at Sarah.
“What?”
“When he saw me.”
She pressed her hands against the wheelchair arms.
“He didn’t run until the elevator closed.”
Chen’s expression shifted.
“A diversion.”
Mara turned pale.
“The infusion.”
We all looked at one another.
The cart.
The nurse.
The bag left upstairs.
Chen radioed immediately.
“Secure Sarah Caldwell’s room and medication cart. Nobody touches anything.”
A voice answered.
Then silence.
“Repeat.”
Static.
Chen’s eyes hardened.
“Back upstairs.”
We returned faster than we had come down.
The nurse who delivered the medication was gone.
The cart remained.
So did the infusion bag.
But Sarah’s room door stood open.
Lily and Rebecca were inside.
Safe.
“What happened?” I asked.
Lily looked confused.
“Nothing.”
“The nurse?”
“She said she had to get paperwork.”
“When?”
“Right after you left.”
Mara moved toward the infusion cart.
“Don’t touch it.”
Chen’s crime-scene technician arrived moments later.
Photographs first.
Gloves.
Swabs.
The medication bag was removed.
A second bag sat beneath it.
No label.
Clear fluid.
“What’s that?” Sarah asked.
Mara shook her head.
“Not standard.”
The technician sealed it.
Then found something taped beneath the cart.
A small plastic vial.
Empty.
Mara stared at it.
“That’s not from pharmacy.”
“What is it?”
“Could be almost anything.”
Sarah looked toward the hallway.
“Victor wanted us chasing him.”
“Yes,” Chen said.
“Why?”
“So someone else could come here.”
Rebecca’s face changed.
“You think the nurse was with him.”
“We don’t know.”
Lily asked, “Was she really a nurse?”
Mara frowned.
“I didn’t recognize her.”
That answer worsened everything.
Security pulled the footage.
The woman had entered the floor twelve minutes before Victor appeared.
Badge valid.
Name on badge: Karen Holt.
Mara searched employee records.
“No Karen Holt works here.”
“Badge cloned?”
“Or stolen.”
Chen said, “Find the original badge holder.”
Five minutes later security located a pharmacist in another building.
Her badge had gone missing two days earlier.
Victor’s network was wider than one man.
Sarah watched the footage again.
The fake nurse’s face was partially visible.
Dark hair.
Mask.
Approximately fifty.
“Do you know her?” I asked.
Sarah shook her head.
Rebecca stepped closer to the screen.
Then stopped.
“What?”
“She looks familiar.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rebecca.”
“I said I don’t know.”
Sarah looked at her.
Rebecca sighed.
“She reminds me of someone from Nathan’s old clinic.”
Mara asked, “Doctor?”
“No. Technician.”
“Name?”
Rebecca struggled.
“Anne.”
Sarah went still.
“Anne.”
“You remember?”
“A woman with red glasses.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Yes.”
“What was her last name?”
“Bishop.”
Mara typed.
The result appeared.
Anne Bishop.
Research nurse.
Employed twenty-six years earlier.
Current status: unknown.
No death certificate.
No later hospital employment.
Chen added the name to the search.
Sarah whispered, “Another person who disappeared.”
The pattern had become almost absurd.
People entered the story.
Then vanished.
Only to return decades later under different names.
Mara received a call from the lab.
Preliminary analysis of the infusion had begun.
The labeled bag contained the prescribed cancer-support medication.
The sedative was not in it.
Everyone stared at her.
“But the order showed a sedative.”
“Yes.”
“So pharmacy substituted?”
“No.”
“Then where is it?”
Mara looked at the unlabeled bag.
“They’re testing that.”
The empty vial yielded faster results.
A benzodiazepine-class drug.
Strong.
But common enough not to explain everything.
Then the lab technician called again.
Mara’s expression changed while she listened.
“What?”
She put the phone on speaker.
The chemist spoke carefully.
“The unlabeled bag contains saline plus two compounds.”
“One is the sedative?”
“Yes.”
“And the other?”
Silence.
“We’re still identifying it.”
Mara frowned.
“Why?”
“It isn’t in our current formulary.”
“Experimental?”
“Possibly.”
Sarah stared at the bag through the evidence container.
“A memory drug.”
Nobody answered.
She looked at Michael’s secure video screen, still open but muted.
“He said Victor was continuing the research.”
“Yes.”
“What if this is it?”
Mara said, “We don’t know.”
Sarah almost smiled.
“You and Ethan should start a club.”
I squeezed her shoulder.
“If the membership rule is not making things up, yes.”
Thirty minutes later, the compound was identified.
Not by Mercy General.
By an external toxicology database.
Code designation: V-17.
Mara stared at the screen.
“V.”
Sarah looked at her.
“Victor.”
“Maybe.”
The original research paper surfaced in an archive.
Twenty-six years old.
Authors:
Nathan Vale.
Victor Hale.
Anne Bishop.
The study involved experimental modulation of traumatic-memory reconsolidation.
Human trials had never been approved.
At least officially.
Sarah’s name did not appear.
Subjects were identified by numbers.
Chen asked Aaron to inspect the USB drive for references to V-17.
He found one.
A scanned handwritten chart.
SUBJECT S-4.
Female.
Age seventeen.
Traumatic memory profile.
Sarah’s hand tightened around mine.
“That’s me.”
We could not prove it yet.
Then Mara read the weight.
Height.
Date of birth.
All matched.
Sarah looked away.
The notes described initial dosing.
Disorientation.
Memory fragmentation.
Reduction in emotional recall.
Then another entry.
“Subject demonstrates unexpected resistance.”
I felt sick.
They had experimented repeatedly.
Not once.
Repeatedly.
Sarah whispered, “How many doses?”
Mara scrolled.
“At least seven.”
Rebecca began crying.
“I gave her some.”
Sarah did not look at her.
The chart confirmed four doses were administered after discharge.
Home administration.
Initials beside them:
R.W.
Rebecca Whitmore.
Rebecca covered her mouth.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Sarah said.
It was the first kindness she had offered her sister since learning the truth.
Rebecca stared.
“You believe me?”
“I believe you didn’t understand what it was.”
Tears rolled down Rebecca’s face.
“That doesn’t make what I did harmless.”
“No.”
Sarah looked back at the chart.
“Who gave the hospital doses?”
Initials:
A.B.
Anne Bishop.
And V.H.
Victor.
Nathan’s initials appeared only once.
N.V.
Beside one note.
DISCONTINUE. SUBJECT EXHIBITING SEVERE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LOSS.
Mara frowned.
“Nathan tried to stop.”
Sarah stared.
“After participating.”
“Yes.”
“That matters.”
“But it doesn’t absolve him.”
“No.”
Again, the truth refused to become simple.
Chen received another radio call.
Victor had not left the hospital.
His image appeared on a basement camera ten minutes earlier.
He had changed clothes.
Maintenance uniform.
Moving toward the old pharmacy storage area.
“Anne?” Chen asked.
“No sign.”
Then another officer interrupted.
A woman matching Anne’s approximate age had been seen entering the hospital that morning using a contractor badge.
Chen stood.
“Victor and Anne are both inside.”
Sarah looked toward the infusion bag.
“They came together.”
“Maybe.”
“Stop saying maybe.”
Chen almost smiled.
“Occupational hazard.”
The basement search began.
We were ordered to remain in the secure room.
This time Sarah did not fight it.
She was reading the S-4 notes.
Every page gave her back a piece of her stolen history.
One entry described a memory she had shared after the drug.
Pink blanket.
Baby.
Name Elizabeth.
Another note:
SUBJECT PERSISTENTLY RECONSTRUCTS SUPPRESSED MATERIAL.
Victor had underlined it.
Then wrote:
Consider stronger protocol.
Nathan’s handwriting below:
NO.
Sarah touched the word.
“He said no.”
“Yes.”
“Did he mean it?”
“We’ll ask if he wakes.”
Mara checked Nathan’s condition.
Improving.
Expected to breathe without assistance soon.
Michael was stable too.
Two surviving witnesses.
Victor might know that.
“He came to finish things,” I said.
Chen looked at me.
“Nathan and Michael?”
“And Sarah.”
She nodded.
“That is one working theory.”
Sarah looked at the old records.
“He doesn’t want me dead.”
“What?”
“If he wanted me dead, he had easier opportunities.”
I understood.
“He wants the memories gone.”
“Yes.”
“That can still kill you.”
“I know.”
Her expression hardened.
“But the research matters more to him than I do.”
The insight felt right.
Victor did not see Sarah as a person.
He saw a result.
A subject.
Twenty-five years of follow-up.
Cancer.
Recovered memory.
A living experiment that refused to stay controlled.
Lily sat beside her mother.
“What happens if he gets away?”
Sarah looked at her.
“Then we remember anyway.”
My phone rang.
Unknown.
Every person stiffened.
Chen gestured for me to answer on speaker.
“Hello?”
A woman whispered.
“Ethan?”
“Who is this?”
Silence.
Then:
“Claire.”
Lily stood so quickly her chair fell.
“Claire Mercer?”
“Yes.”
Sarah leaned toward the phone.
“Claire.”
The woman began crying.
“Sarah?”
“I’m here.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Why?”
“Victor told me the surgery failed.”
My blood went cold.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I’m locked somewhere.”
Chen moved closer.
“Claire, this is Detective Laura Chen. Can you describe what you see?”
“Concrete walls. Pipes. Old shelves.”
Mara whispered, “Basement.”
Claire heard.
“Yes. Hospital basement.”
“Can you hear anything?”
“Ventilation.”
“Doors?”
“One metal door.”
“Were you brought here today?”
“No.”
“How long?”
Claire started crying.
“I don’t know.”
Sarah looked horrified.
“Claire, how long have you been missing?”
“I wasn’t missing at first.”
“What does that mean?”
“I hid.”
“From Victor?”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“He found me.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
The motel.
Michael had been right.
“Did Nathan know?”
“Yes.”
“Did Nathan help Victor?”
“No.”
Claire answered fiercely.
“Nathan tried to get me out.”
That explained Nathan’s letter.
His attempt to contact Michael.
Maybe his overdose.
“Where is Victor now?”
“I heard him ten minutes ago.”
Chen signaled officers.
“Do not call out.”
Claire whispered, “He’s not alone.”
“Anne Bishop?”
Silence.
Then Claire said, “Anne is dead.”
Everyone froze.
“What?”
“Victor killed her years ago.”
Sarah stared.
“Then who brought the infusion?”
Claire breathed rapidly.
“Someone else.”
“Who?”
“She looks like Anne because she’s her daughter.”
Mara whispered, “Name?”
Claire answered.
“Dr. Emily Bishop.”
Mara went pale.
Sarah saw it.
“You know her.”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
Mara looked toward the door.
“Chief of pharmacy.”
The person with authority over every medication in the hospital.
Claire whispered through the phone.
“She’s Victor’s daughter too.”
The room went silent.
And in that silence, Sarah’s IV pump suddenly beeped.
Mara turned.
The display changed by itself.
REMOTE INFUSION COMMAND ACCEPTED.
Mara lunged for the line.
Click here to continue reading: PART 18: The Remote Infusion Command Nearly Reached Sarah’s Vein, and Claire Revealed Why Victor Had Built His Own Daughter Into the Experiment
Three Years After Our Quiet Divorce, Sarah Came Home for One Night and Left Her Wedding Ring Behind
Part 17 of 50
