CHAPTER 13: THE HOSPITAL WITHOUT PATIENTS
The plane landed on a private runway behind the hospital.
No ambulances moved.
No doctors appeared at the entrance.
The entire building had been evacuated.
“Where are the patients?” Claire asked.
Mercer rubbed the cut on his throat.
“Moved yesterday.”
“Why?”
“To make room.”
The guards marched everyone into the hospital.
The public floors were empty.
Children’s drawings still covered the walls.
Half-finished meals remained beside abandoned beds.
It looked as though thousands of people had vanished in the middle of the night.
Adrian used his executive access card on the basement elevator.
The screen rejected him.
Mercer placed his hand on the scanner.
The doors opened.
“You built this hospital beneath my company,” Adrian said.
“Your company built it for us.”
The elevator descended past twelve official basement levels.
Then continued downward.
When the doors opened, Claire heard children singing.
The coded lullaby.
Hundreds of young voices echoed through white corridors.
Lily stood at the front of the group.
She ran toward Claire.
“Mama!”
A guard caught her before she reached them.
Claire fought against her restraints.
“Let her go!”
Lily kicked and screamed.
Adrian stared at the child with tears in his eyes.
She had his dark hair.
Claire’s blue eyes.
And the same small dimple near her mouth.
Mercer brought Lily closer.
“She has never met you, but your voice was placed inside her dreams.”
Claire looked at Lily.
“You know me because they made you know me.”
Lily shook her head.
“I remember you singing.”
Claire had never sung to her.
Anna whispered, “She carries implanted memories.”
“Whose?”
Anna looked toward Claire.
“Yours.”
Mercer led them into a circular laboratory.
Hundreds of children lay inside glass chambers.
Each chamber displayed a name and a future identity.
Politicians.
Judges.
Military commanders.
Corporate leaders.
The children had been created as replacement bodies.
Claire Vale read one label.
FUTURE HOST: COMMISSIONER THOMAS HALE.
She looked at Mercer.
“You plan to overwrite children.”
“I plan to preserve human achievement.”
“You preserve powerful people.”
“Power is achievement.”
Richard moved toward him.
“You are not my father.”
Mercer smiled.
“I remember teaching you to swim. I remember the first lie you told your mother. I remember every disappointment.”
Richard’s face tightened.
“Memories don’t make you him.”
“Then what does?”
An alarm interrupted them.
Someone had breached the river tunnel.
Marcus and Miriam appeared on a security monitor.
They were fighting guards beneath the western wing.
Claire Vale smiled.
Mercer turned toward the screen.
That moment was enough.
Adrian attacked him.
Claire grabbed Lily.
Claire Vale fired at the laboratory controls.
Glass chambers began opening.
Hundreds of children woke at the same time.
Then the hospital’s emergency system announced:
May you like
SECOND FIRE ACTIVATED.
TIME REMAINING: THIRTY MINUTES.
