Chapter 2 - The Green Pulse
We hid in the basement linen closet for forty-five minutes. Every time heavy boots passed down the concrete corridor outside, I held my hand over Emma's mouth while she held her hand over Lily's.
My phone was buzzing constantly in my pocket.
Sarah: "They know where you live, Evie. They know where Emma goes to school." Sarah: "If you don't bring her to the west parking garage in ten minutes, they're calling the police on YOU for kidnapping." Unknown Number: "Mrs. Vance. The bio-monitoring tag on subject L-0604 is active. We can trace her location within three meters. Make this easy."
I stared at the screen. Bio-monitoring tag.
"Lily," I whispered, kneeling down on the tile floor beside a stack of folded hospital blankets. "Honey, I need to look at your back again. Can I do that?"
Lily nodded slowly, her large brown eyes wide with fear. "Does it have to come out?"
"Does what have to come out?"
"The little seed," Lily whispered. "Mommy said the doctor put a magic seed inside me so Grandpa wouldn't be sick anymore."
My father had died six months ago from advanced pancreatic cancer. Or at least, that’s what we had been told. We had buried an urn full of ashes in the family plot in suburban Chicago.
"What seed, Lily?" I carefully peeled back the edge of the surgical tape.
The incision was roughly three inches long, closed with meticulous, sub-cuticular sutures—the kind of work done by a high-end plastic surgeon, not an emergency room doctor. Beneath the skin, a small, hard cylinder the size of a pill was buried near her scapula. And every three seconds, a faint, bioluminescent green light flared beneath her skin, fading slowly before flaring again.
It wasn't just a tracking chip. It was an active delivery system.
"Emma," I said, my voice unnaturally level. "Reach into my purse and get my car keys."
"Mom, are we going to the car?"
"No. We're going to find a doctor I actually trust."
I pulled out my phone, turned off the location tracking, and dialed a number I hadn't called in four years: Dr. David Chen, my ex-husband's older brother and a lead vascular surgeon at Northwestern Memorial.
He answered on the third ring. "Evelyn? It's eleven o'clock on a Saturday. Is Emma okay?"
"David," I said, my voice cracking despite my best efforts. "I need you to open your private clinic in Skokie. Right now. And you can't tell Sarah. You can't tell anyone."
There was a long pause on the line. I could hear the rustle of sheets as David sat up in bed. "Evelyn, what's going on? Sarah called me two hours ago asking if I had a license to perform minor outpatient procedures outside a hospital setting. I told her she was out of her mind."
"She brought Lily to someone else," I said, tears finally overflowing down my cheeks. "David, there's something inside my niece. It's glowing."
Another long silence. Then, the sound of keys jangling. "Give me twenty minutes. Use the alley entrance behind the pharmacy. Don't use your main car—if they have a tracker on her, they've already tagged your license plate."
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"I don't have another car, David!"
"Then steal one," David said flatly. "Or take an unregistered cab. Just get her here before whatever is in her system finishes doing what it was put there to do."
