Chapter 5 - Every Needle Had a Name
"Purge?" Clara repeated.
Jonas shut the security feed and pulled her into a side room. The walls were lined with old medical charts, each marked with a date and a bar code.
"It's their word for destroying records and anyone they consider evidence," he said.
"Then let's get out."
"The doors are sealed."
"You built them. Open them!"
He gestured toward the two silhouettes on the console. "The system needs both daughters alive and willing. Victoria has been trying to force it with drugs and implants."
Clara saw a familiar street address on a file. It was her childhood apartment in Spokane. Below it were rows of dates: vaccination appointments, sports physicals, blood tests at school.
Every doctor had been paid by a company called Westmere Health. A separate burial record named Marcus as the man who arranged her father's funeral, though the urn had been sealed.
"They watched me my whole life?"
"We needed to know you were safe," Jonas said.
"We?"
He went quiet.
Clara remembered June refusing to let her skip annual checkups, even when money was tight. She remembered the nurse who always asked whether she dreamed of blue lights. She remembered June crying the night Clara turned eighteen and wanted to move across the country.
"June knew," she said.
"She knew enough to protect you."
"And she never told me I had a sister?"
"If Marcus had learned there were two, he would have taken you both."
Clara yanked a folder from the shelf. A photograph showed a much younger Jonas standing beside a smiling Victoria and a machine labeled SEQUENCE.
Under the photo was his signature, dated the morning of the fire.
She read the authorization line twice.
SUBJECT 0B: CONTINUED OBSERVATION APPROVED.
May you like
Jonas reached for the page, but Clara held it away.
"You weren't just hiding me," she said. "You signed off on everything they did."
