Chapter 10 - The First Ariel
Bell finally spoke through attorneys.
“Ariel” was a project code.
A.R.I.E.L.
Adaptive Reproductive Identity and Embryo Lineage.
Not my daughter.
A research classification.
I wanted to throw up.
My daughter’s name had come from Glen.
Or so I thought.
I turned toward him.
“Why did you suggest Ariel?”
His face went empty.
Clara answered.
“Because I did.”
Of course.
Glen admitted Clara mentioned the name years earlier.
He liked it.
Never knew its significance.
Clara claimed she did not either.
Then Gabriel contradicted her.
“You heard Bell use it.”
Clara began crying.
When she worked for Bell, Project Ariel involved patients whose reproductive files were deliberately separated from legal identity.
Officially, privacy research.
Actually, it gave Bell a framework to conceal unauthorized donor substitutions.
My mother discovered it.
The old sample labeled “Ariel Hale” belonged to a child conceived through one of Bell’s manipulated cases.
Who?
The current data cross-match produced a shocking candidate.
Clara.
Not as mother.
As patient.
She had undergone fertility preservation after the twins were born.
Bell kept samples without permission.
But the date still didn’t fit.
Then investigators found the source record.
“Ariel Hale” was not Clara.
It was an infant.
Female.
Born thirty-one years earlier.
Almost exactly my age.
I stopped breathing.
No.
The DNA comparison arrived.
The stored “Ariel Hale” sample matched me.
The clinic had preserved my newborn blood.
Under a project code.
My mother’s investigation had started far earlier than anyone told me.
She had suspected from my birth that Bell used unauthorized donor material.
Project Ariel was built partly around cases like mine.
My daughter had unknowingly received the same name Bell once assigned to me.
Coincidence?
No.
Clara finally admitted it.
“I suggested Ariel because your mother used to call you that privately.”
My throat tightened.
“Why?”
“She found the code in Bell’s records and reclaimed it. She said nobody gets to decide her daughter is a file number.”
That was why Mom sometimes called me “little star.”
Ariel.
Lion of God by traditional meaning.
But to her, it had become defiance.
I cried harder than I had since this began.
Then Gabriel placed a hand on the table.
“There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“Bell didn’t keep your sample just for research.”
“Then why?”
“Because someone paid him to verify your identity years later.”
“When?”
“Eight years ago.”
The year I met Glen.
I slowly turned toward my husband.
He looked horrified.
“I didn’t know.”
May you like
Maybe.
But the payment came from a company owned by Glen’s adoptive father.
