CHAPTER 4 THE MISSING YEARS
Nathaniel remembered the hallway.
He remembered the child with the wooden boat.
He remembered his father placing one hand on his shoulder and telling him not to ask questions.
After that, he remembered almost nothing.
“The clinic was outside Sacramento,” he told Claire. “My father said I was exhausted. He said Dr. Hart would help me sleep.”
“How long were you there?”
“Three days.”
“And when you left?”
“I believed the inland facility had been a boarding school.”
Claire stood across from him in the library.
“You were seventeen, Nathaniel. Not seven.”
“I know.”
“You saw children wearing numbered bracelets.”
“I know.”
“And you accepted your father’s explanation?”
“I don’t remember being given one.”
Claire studied him.
She had learned to recognize his evasions. This did not feel like one.
“Were you drugged?”
“Possibly.”
“That answer isn’t enough.”
“No. It isn’t.”
They contacted the federal prosecutor who had led the Lighthouse investigation. By morning, a team began reviewing Nathaniel’s sealed medical records.
Most had been destroyed.
One insurance claim survived.
It showed that Nathaniel Blackwood had undergone an “acute neurological stabilization procedure” at Hart Behavioral Institute.
The date matched his visit to the inland facility.
The procedure code did not exist in any recognized medical database.
Noah sat beside Claire as they read the report.
“Did Grandpa erase Dad’s memory?”
“We don’t know.”
“He erased other people’s names.”
Claire touched her son’s shoulder.
“That doesn’t mean we assume every answer before we have evidence.”
Noah nodded, but he continued reading.
At the bottom of the claim was an authorization signature.
Not Nathaniel’s father.
Claire’s father.
Arthur Hale.
Nathaniel stepped away from the desk.
“Arthur approved it?”
Claire read the signature twice.
Her father had investigated Project Lighthouse before his death. She had believed he was trying to expose the network.
But the document suggested he had authorized an experimental procedure on Nathaniel.
“Signatures can be forged,” Claire said.
Nathaniel looked at her.
“You don’t believe that.”
“I believe we verify evidence.”
Her phone rang.
Rosa’s name appeared on the screen.
Claire answered.
“We found Miriam,” Rosa said.
“Where?”
“Security footage from a bus station in Oregon. She bought a ticket under her original name.”
“To where?”
“Sacramento.”
Hart’s clinic had closed twenty-three years earlier.
The building had later become a private school, then a religious retreat. It now stood abandoned behind a rusted steel gate.
Claire, Nathaniel, Rosa, and two federal agents entered shortly before sunset.
The main corridor smelled of dust and rainwater.
Old patient rooms lined both sides.
No beds remained.
No medical equipment.
Only pale rectangles on the walls where records had once been mounted.
Noah had remained at Open Door House under protection.
Claire was grateful.
The building felt wrong.
They reached a basement laboratory hidden behind a false storage wall.
Inside, shelves held hundreds of empty glass containers.
A projector sat on a metal table.
When Nathaniel touched the power switch, it turned on.
The machine should not have had electricity.
A film began playing against the far wall.
The recording showed Nathaniel at seventeen, seated in a medical chair.
Dr. Elias Hart stood beside him.
Claire’s father appeared in the background.
Arthur Hale looked directly into the camera.
“Subject retains visual memory after the third treatment,” he said. “Increase the dosage.”
Nathaniel gripped the table.
Claire felt sick.
The film skipped.
A new image appeared.
The boy from the Polaroid sat in the same chair.
N-17 was visible on his bracelet.
Dr. Hart leaned toward the camera.
“Identity transfer candidate is stable.”
The boy turned his face toward the lens.
Claire stopped breathing.
The child looked exactly like Noah.
Not similar.
Not related.
Exactly like him.
The projector clicked off.
In the darkness, someone locked the basement door.
May you like
Then Miriam spoke from behind them.
“You finally found the place where your son was created.”
