“Please, Sadie. We did not intend to frighten you.”
“You drugged yourself and pretended my parents imprisoned you.”
“No,” Walter said. “Your parents did imprison me. But I escaped the hospital because the police were asking the wrong questions.”
Beckett’s voice sounded in my ear.
“Keep them talking.”
I took another step.
“What is this place?”
Walter looked around the hidden laboratory.
“Your grandfather’s real legacy.”
Melanie swallowed.
“Grandpa wasn’t just a developer.”
“I know.”
“No,” she said softly. “You don’t.”
She opened a metal drawer and removed a worn leather notebook.
On the cover were two initials.
H.D.
Grandpa.
Walter spoke carefully.
“Harold funded experimental medical research. Quietly. He believed a private laboratory could move faster than universities and corporations.”
“What kind of research?”
Melanie turned toward me.
“Regenerative nerve treatment.”
My heart stopped.
“Why?”
“For you,” she said.
I almost laughed.
“What are you talking about?”
Melanie’s eyes filled with tears that did not look staged this time.
“You were born with a degenerative condition affecting the optic nerve.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It was corrected when you were a baby.”
My fingers went cold.
Walter opened the notebook.
“Harold developed an early treatment using stem-cell-derived compounds. It restored the damaged nerve tissue.”
I touched the bandage over my eye.
“That treatment worked?”
“Yes,” Walter said. “You were the first successful patient.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath me.
“My parents never told me.”
“They were paid to remain silent,” Walter said.
“Paid by whom?”
He looked toward the locked storage units.
“By the company that wanted the formula.”
Before he could say more, the lights went out.
A gunshot exploded through the laboratory.
Melanie screamed.
Walter fell.
And from the darkness, my mother’s voice whispered:
“Your grandfather should have destroyed this place when he had the chance.”
—
PART 4
