Chapter 13 - The Woman With No Name
The woman in the cream coat was shivering when we let her into the rear service corridor.
"I'm not dangerous," she said. "I'm just cold."
She looked like my mother, but she moved differently. Her hands trembled, and her eyes kept checking the exits.
"What do they call you?" I asked.
"Forty-One."
"That's not a name."
"It's all they gave me."
Wren pulled off her jacket and wrapped it around the woman. "How did you get out?"
"Dr. Chen switched my badge with a technician's. She said I should find the girl with her face. There are too many girls with that face."
I nearly smiled. "Fair point. I'm Clara."
"I know. They practiced saying your name."
Her voice cracked. She told us Rusk had used her to impersonate me on security cameras, then ordered staff to sedate her when she began asking questions. Ada had helped her slip out through a delivery gate.
"Do you want to pick a name?" Maya asked gently.
The woman considered this as though she'd never been offered a choice with no punishment attached.
"June," she said. "I saw it on a book. It sounded warm."
I felt my throat close. Aunt June had raised me, and she'd died last winter without ever explaining why she feared the forest.
Sasha called an independent medical center. June needed care, a protected identity, and someone who would listen without treating her like evidence.
Before leaving with the physician Sasha arranged, June gripped my hand.
"Dr. Rusk is moving the six women at four tomorrow morning. She told the drivers there's no need to keep them awake."
"How do you know?"
June looked straight at me.
"Because I heard her say the ones who can tell stories are the ones who have to disappear."
Then my phone rang.
May you like
The screen showed DAD.
I hadn't saved that number.
