Chapter 3 - The Second Heartbeat
Claire was taken to a hospital unrelated to Mercer family.
Victor? Not in prompt. Keep Vanessa with her.
Ultrasound showed living fetus.
Normal heart rate.
No obvious emergency.
The “handprint” had not literally been a fetal hand pressing through uterus. Physicians explained abdominal wall and uterine movement can create dramatic contours, especially late pregnancy.
That should have reassured Claire.
It did not.
Because Lily had recognized pattern before anyone else.
Claire demanded Daniel’s complete medical history involving Emily.
Daniel resisted.
Then admitted there was a phenomenon Mercer Biomedical had studied.
Not supernatural.
Not monstrous baby.
A diagnostic artifact.
Mercer had developed experimental fetal monitoring patch called Aster-9.
It combined ultrasound micro-array sensors with electrical monitoring.
Under certain conditions it detected two rhythmic signals.
One was fetal heartbeat.
Second was maternal vascular signal distorted by placental movement.
Early software sometimes interpreted second signal as another fetal cardiac source.
“The second heartbeat,” Claire whispered.
Daniel nodded.
Emily participated in Aster-9 trial.
Claire’s anger sharpened.
“Am I in that trial?”
“No.”
“Have you used Aster-9 on me?”
“No.”
She searched his face.
He was telling truth.
Then why same movements?
Daniel said they might be unrelated.
Lily shook head.
“Mommy had the mark.”
“What mark?”
Lily pointed at Claire’s abdomen.
Not visible through dress.
“Little circle.”
Claire remembered.
Three weeks earlier Daniel had given her a skin-safe “vitamin monitor” near right side of belly.
A small adhesive disk.
She had removed it after irritation.
“What was that?”
Daniel went still.
Claire’s voice broke.
“You said it measured hydration.”
“It does.”
“Only hydration?”
Silence.
Vanessa stepped toward him.
“What did you put on your wife?”
Daniel finally admitted device was descendant of Aster-9 technology.
Commercial version.
Approved for maternal monitoring.
Safe.
But Claire had never been told its origin.
Why hide it?
Because Daniel knew Emily’s case would terrify her.
That answer made everything worse.
Then hospital technician reviewed Claire’s records.
Her device had uploaded data automatically.
Destination:
Mercer Biomedical maternal archive.
Claire stared at Daniel.
“You've been sending my pregnancy data to your company?”
“I thought I disabled research upload.”
“You thought?”
Daniel grabbed phone.
Account showed unexpected access.
Someone had been reviewing Claire’s fetal data every night.
User ID:
EMD-17.
Vanessa stopped.
“EMD.”
Emily Marie Dawson.
Daniel whispered:
May you like
“That account was closed two years ago.”
Yet it had accessed Claire’s pregnancy file forty-three minutes before the ballroom dinner.
