Chapter 6 - The Paper Trail
The magnitude of Eleanor’s revelation felt almost too vast to comprehend. Medical experimentation on a seven-year-old child sounded like the plot of a dark thriller, not something happening in a sleepy Pennsylvania town. But as Valerie drove home in the darkness, every piece of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place.
The sudden drop in Lila's blood pressure. The rigid posture. The buttoned cardigan hiding injection sites or internal inflammation. The absences on Mondays after weekend treatments. The cover-up provided by Dr. Harrison, who was likely managing the clinical data.
Valerie knew she couldn't simply go back to the police with a story told by a panicked mother in the woods. Marcus would deny everything, claim Eleanor was mentally unstable, and lock Lila away even tighter. She needed physical, undeniable proof.
At 2:00 a.m., Valerie was sitting at her kitchen table, staring at her laptop screen. She was searching corporate registries in Delaware and the Cayman Islands, tracking Veritas Development and its affiliated corporate entities.
After hours of digging through public corporate filings, she hit a breakthrough. Veritas was linked to a parent bio-tech firm called Aegis Therapeutics Inc., registered in Panama. The primary shareholders listed on the incorporation documents included two names: Marcus Mercer and Dr. Arthur Harrison.
Furthermore, a search of medical research databases revealed that Aegis Therapeutics had filed for international patents on a revolutionary synthetic protein designed to treat degenerative muscular disorders—a patent worth estimated hundreds of millions of dollars if successfully cleared through human trials. But FDA approval in the United States required years of costly, rigorous testing.
Marcus had bypassed the entire regulatory system by using his own daughter as a human subject in a hidden, black-market lab.
Valerie printed out the corporate trees, patent filings, and property records, spreading them across her table. It was a massive network of corruption, but it still lacked one crucial element: direct medical proof that the drug was currently in Lila’s system.
Her phone chimed on the table. It was an incoming text from an unknown, encrypted number.
Ms. Kincaid. This is Eleanor. Marcus is taking Lila out of the state tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM. He claims they are going to a medical facility in Switzerland for 'specialized care.' If they board that private plane, she will never come back. Please help us.
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Valerie checked the clock. It was 3:45 a.m.
They had less than two hours before Lila was removed from the country forever.
