Chapter 5 - Daniel’s Signature
Daniel swore he never signed transfer.
Forensic review found signature electronically valid.
His credentials had authorized it.
But that did not prove he personally clicked button.
Two years earlier Mercer system allowed delegated clinical access.
Daniel’s father Richard had administrator privileges.
So did chief research nurse Helen Shaw.
And compliance director Nathan Cole.
Vanessa froze at last name.
Nathan Cole was her husband.
Lily’s uncle by marriage.
Vanessa had separated from him six months earlier.
“Why was Nathan involved?”
Daniel looked equally surprised.
Nathan handled research compliance.
Vanessa called him.
No answer.
Police found him at home.
He denied involvement in Emily’s disappearance but admitted he knew baby survived.
Vanessa nearly collapsed.
“You knew?”
Nathan said Richard Mercer ordered confidentiality because Aster-9 trial had produced catastrophic diagnostic discrepancies.
If public learned standard scan showed fetal death while experimental system showed life, Mercer feared lawsuits and regulatory shutdown.
That sounded like corporate cover-up.
But why hide a living infant?
Nathan said infant required neonatal care.
Emily became emotionally unstable after being told baby had died, then told opposite.
Richard worried she might remove infant against medical advice.
Temporary protective order was discussed.
Was one obtained?
No.
Yet baby was transferred anyway.
Where?
Nathan claimed not know.
Vanessa did not believe him.
Neither did investigators.
Then Lily remembered another detail.
After Emily secretly came home, she gave Lily a burgundy ribbon.
“Mommy said it belonged to baby.”
Vanessa had kept Lily’s childhood box.
Ribbon still there.
Attached beneath knot was tiny plastic hospital tag.
Code:
A9-17-B.
Aster-9.
Participant 17.
Infant B.
Why B?
Was there an Infant A?
Daniel said trial notation used M for mother and B for baby.
Simple.
But older protocol showed something else.
For pregnancies with anomalous dual-signal readings, samples were labeled:
A and B.
Not mother and baby.
Signal A.
Signal B.
Claire stared.
“The second heartbeat.”
Daniel nodded.
Emily’s pregnancy produced two independently persistent fetal-pattern signals during final scan.
Yet delivery record documented one baby.
Where did second signal come from?
Then Claire’s current monitoring file updated.
Her pregnancy had just been reclassified automatically:
May you like
DUAL-SIGNAL PATTERN CONFIRMED.
Same classification as Emily.
