Chapter 4: A: Coincidental Lobby Discovery

👉 Previous Decision: You chose to search for the smuggled note in the public lobby area.

The lobby bustled, a cacophony of echoing footsteps and hushed conversations. Clara moved through the crowd, a cold dread creeping through her as she realized the laundry cart was gone. She scoured the faces, the corridors leading to patient rooms, the information desk. Nothing. Her note, the only tangible evidence she had, was lost.

Then she saw him. A man, perhaps in his late forties, sat slumped on a beige couch near the coffee shop, his face buried in his hands. He wore a rumpled suit, his tie loosened. On the small table beside him lay a single, crisp medical file.

Clara’s eyes snagged on the file’s visible edge: “Patient Records – Subject 7.”

A jolt ran through her. Subject 7. The patient in B-Wing, the one with the unusual cranial implants and the blank, staring eyes. The one Dr. Avery referred to only by number.

The man lifted his head, revealing red-rimmed eyes. He looked exactly like the husband of the grieving woman Clara had seen earlier, talking about Toby. He held a small, crumpled drawing. It was a crude sketch of a woman’s face. His wife.

He smoothed the drawing on his knee. “They told me,” he muttered to himself, his voice raw. “They told me he’d be fine. Dr. Avery. He promised.”

Clara hesitated. Approaching him was a massive risk. It could draw unwanted attention. But the information sitting beside him, the link to Subject 7, was too vital to ignore. It could be the first concrete thread to unraveling Avery’s operation.

A decision had to be made, right here, in the open, bustling lobby of St. Jude-Northwest.