If you ever touch my wife again, I will make sure you vanish from every medical registry in North America before sunrise.
A week crawled by in the beautiful, watching house. I moved through its sterile halls, the knowledge of the hidden cameras prickling my skin. Arthur’s gentle reassurances about my health now felt like carefully constructed lies. Maya, oblivious to the surveillance, spent her days drawing and exploring the vast backyard.
One night, the house groaned around me, settling into its midnight silence. I lay awake, the fluorescent gleam of the security panel outside my window a constant reminder of my captivity. A soft scratching sound, almost imperceptible, came from the back patio door.
I froze, my heart hammering. Was it Arthur’s private security? Or worse, the corporate rivals Julian supposedly sold files to?
A shadow detached itself from the moonlit trees outside. The back patio door slid open with a whisper of glass on track. Julian Pryce stepped into the house, his eyes darting, his face gaunt and covered in dirt. He moved with a desperate urgency, not an attacker’s stealth.
He spotted me in the dimly lit living room, my silhouette stark against the window. He didn’t approach, didn’t threaten. Instead, he lunged for the coffee table, slamming down a thick, heavy yellow folder.
“Read this, Nora,” he hissed, his voice raw with exhaustion and fear. “Before he comes back. Please, just read it.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, or for me to move. He scrambled back out the door, vanishing into the night as quickly as he’d appeared.
My hands trembled as I reached for the folder. It was old, worn at the edges, bound by a faded yellow elastic band. “Pryce, Evelyn – Patient File,” read the label in faded ink.
Evelyn. Julian’s sister.
I opened the folder. Page after page of medical records, lab results, and physician notes. Evelyn Pryce, 24 years old. Diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of organ failure. Two years ago.
My eyes snagged on a series of initials stamped repeatedly on the records: “Dr. A.E.” Arthur Ellison.
The file detailed an experimental clinical trial, an unapproved gene therapy vector. It documented her rapid decline, the failed treatments, the increasingly desperate measures. The timeline of her illness matched exactly the timeline of Arthur’s “groundbreaking research” that had propelled his career years ago.
Then, a crucial detail leaped off the page: a daily regimen of “yellow capsule” supplements. I looked down at my own hand, where I still held the small, yellow capsule Arthur gave me every morning, promising it was for the baby’s health.
It wasn’t a prenatal vitamin. It was the same experimental gene therapy vector that had killed Evelyn Pryce.
More Stories
+ There are no comments
Add yours