The Sphinx Project (19 page)

I didn't need to count the numbers as I paced my way along the hallway, but I couldn't help my eyes sliding over them. Below each little number was a small metal frame, holding a piece of card with the last name of the occupant printed in plain black pen.

At room number 514 I stopped, gathering my confidence before turning to gaze through the window. It was exactly the same—the same white walls, the same hospital bed, the same little cupboard next to the bed with a pitcher of water and a glass on top.

The person lying in the bed had the white blanket pulled up across his chest. Numerous tubes and wires ran between his thin arm and the machines standing nearby.

The only thing different was that the name on that plastic bracelet around his wrist was not Mary. Mom had died a long time ago, but standing here, the feelings from that day flooded back.

Chapter Twenty-one

"Are you all right?" a voice beside me asked.

I squeaked, jumping to face the speaker. He was right next to me. Why hadn't I heard him approach?

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." The boy looked to be about my age, worry written plainly across his face. His voice was pleasant and kind, although there also seemed to be a hint of sympathy lying just below the surface.

"It's fine," I said, brushing away his worry. I tried to discreetly draw a long breath, but he noticed.

"Do you know him? Are you family?" The sympathy grew more pronounced. Apparently the prognosis for this guy wasn't good.

I glanced back to the bed in room 514, trying to think of an excuse for my presence, but I could only think about the boy; he seemed magnetic somehow. I didn't know why, but he reminded me a lot of Mouse. He even looked similar to her, I decided; his dark eyes were warm and comforting, and his light brown hair flopped over his eyes.

He appeared young, too young to be working in the ICU. He wore scrubs though, and he had an official identification tag hanging around his neck.

I shook my head sharply a few times to bring me back to my senses. "No, I mean… No, I don't know him." My voice trailed off. I sounded pathetic.

"Okay," he replied gently, "I'm afraid visiting hours are over now anyway, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I'm sorry."

I simply nodded dumbly, remembering the last time we'd left here. My eyes watered as I turned and walked back to the security door.

"Are you okay?" he asked, keeping in step beside me.

I nodded again.

He flicked the switch, which released the door and held it open for me to exit. He was about to shut the door behind me when I snapped back to the present.

"Wait!" I called, almost frantically, as the door was swinging shut. I half expected him to ignore me and let the door close completely, but he caught it and pushed it open again, looking at me inquiringly.

There were so many things I wanted to know. It couldn't hurt to try and find some of the answers now. We couldn't do anything about Nicole until tonight and there was still more than an hour before I was supposed to meet Mouse.

"How long do you keep records here?" I blurted out.

"Oh." He hadn't been expecting that question. "Seven years for hard copies, and pretty much forever for electronic versions."

My mood lightened—only slightly, but this was good news.

He saw the change in my expression. "Why do you want to know?"

"My mom, she died here. My sister and I were adopted and they said our birth-mom had a sister too, but she lived abroad at the time and they couldn't contact her. We've never met her, but our guardians have their own children now and we really want to find out what her name is so we can track her down."

What would he have said if I had told him the truth, that I'm a genetically engineered hybrid on the run from the people who made me? I thought they killed our mom, and they'd kidnapped my sister… Real believable.

It was his turn to remain speechless this time. He was obviously considering something; his brow was furrowed in concentration.

A dark strand of hair fell across my face. I lifted my hand to push it away and his eyes locked on my wrist. I couldn't quite understand the expression on his face while he stared, as if there were a spider sitting there. I glanced up to see my sleeve had pulled away from my hand, exposing my tattoo.

"Come with me."

I followed nervously. What was it about the tattoo that interested him so? Should I really be running the other way? I watched him closely, ready to draw my weapons if he made so much as one wrong move.

He led me back to the bank of elevators. After pushing the call button, it took mere seconds for the doors to slide open. We stepped inside and he pushed the button marked 'Lobby'. In moments, we'd passed the floors separating us from our destination and stepped onto the smooth linoleum.

A crowd of people waited and when the doors opened they surged in, not bothering to let us out first. We pushed past them as they blatantly ignored our excuses.

The last woman to crush into the elevator turned as the doors closed. Her perfectly pressed clothes were immaculate and she wore an identification card on a lanyard around her neck declaring her name to be Sharnee Fould. My breath hitched.

I glanced at her face, identifying her features immediately. I turned as fast as possible, hoping she hadn't seen me. She spoke into her cell phone and I could barely filter her voice out of the crowd with her distinctive accent. The last time I'd seen her I was hallucinating and sick. What on earth was she doing here?

She didn't appear to have noticed me, so I spun and followed the boy. He was very sure in his directions, turning left before left again and then a right. Halfway down the hall he stopped, pulled a swipe card from his side and slid it along the electronic lock on a door. He let it go and it automatically retracted back to his side, attached to some sort of pulley.

He pushed open the door open to reveal an old concrete staircase. He started down the steps, taking me another two floors below the ground.

We came to a tiny office. There was only space for a desk, on which stood an old, boxy computer. He slid onto the computer chair with the worn seat in front of it and gestured for me to take the straight-backed chair opposite.

"Could you write down her full name and date of birth? Also, note any dates that you know she was here, for any reason." He pushed a sheet of paper to me. One side was already ragged with notes, so I turned it over and wrote the requested details clearly before passing it back. He perused it momentarily while the computer booted up. It took ages; Mouse would be swearing at it by now.

It finally beeped. He logged into a black screen with white text and tilted the monitor away from me. I watched his keystrokes, reading what he wrote.

He hit the tab key, typed in Mom's name and pushed enter. His fingers moved over the keys quickly, but nowhere near as fast as Mouse.

"She didn't have a middle name, did she?" he asked, gazing at the screen.

"No." I shook my head. "What are you?" I finally asked, curiosity getting the better of me. "You're not a doctor, are you?'

"I'm a student. I do some work experience here on my days off," he said, not lifting his eyes from the screen.

What sort of student had access to the hospital's records?

He waited until the machine beeped again and he scrolled down the page, using the little wheel on the mouse. He clicked a few times and pressed enter again.

"There's no point looking at the ones who are still alive," he said, mainly speaking to himself. "Uh-huh! Gotcha," he murmured with a final mouse click.

His satisfaction lasted barely a fraction of a second before confusion suffused his face. He turned the screen and his confusion surged into me too. Flashing across the black screen were two words: File Deleted.

His eyebrows knitted as he went back and tried again. A hint of frustration flickered across his face but something I couldn't recognize pushed it away.

"You're sure this was only five years ago?"

I nodded.

He turned the screen back to himself and clicked again, typing something now and then. I didn't bother watching any more. Why would Mom's file have been deleted?

Five minutes later, he clicked the mouse one last time and leaned back. The printer whirred and four sheets of paper whizzed out. It seemed oddly advanced in comparison to the ancient computer.

He handed them to me and I flicked through them. The first page was her basic details: name, date of birth, date of death, contact details and so on. My heart leaped when I came to a point, halfway down the page, where it said family contact. Listed under this was a name and number for someone named Cherelle. I'd only made it up for the purpose of getting my hands on the folder, but the idea of finding my mom's family thrilled me.

"Can…can I copy this?" I asked, amazed I'd found something.

"We'll sort that out later. Can you keep reading?"

Uncertain as to why he'd asked that of me, I did. The next three pages were pretty much the same; three sheets of dates and times. Nothing else. I scanned my eyes down the list and several of the dates sprang out at me—the first was my date of birth, the second a month before mom died and the third was the date of her death.

"Do any of those dates mean anything to you?" he asked, leaning forward over the desk.

I nodded, pointing out the ones that did and explaining why.

"That's what I thought," the boy mused. "They're admission dates. Usually on these sheets, there would be detailed notes beside each one, but there's nothing. Can you wait here for a minute? I'm going to try and track down some of the associated paperwork."

Checking my watch, I nodded. I still had plenty of time before I was due to meet Mouse.

He didn't take long, barely five minutes. For the entire time I kept my hand on my gun and my eyes on the door. Was he going to call security? Did he know about the project? He pushed open the door, something glistening in his eyes like anger, which didn't make sense. Moments after he stepped back into the office, the phone next to the computer rang.

"Jake speaking," he answered, holding the phone to his ear.

He said nothing else, but he did look at me strangely. Hearing what the person on the other side of the line said, I could understand why.

"This is security. We've been advised that there may be a young woman in your office who is of interest to the police. Is she still there?"

I shook my head, panic clouding my features. The scientist may not have seen me, but someone had.

He watched me before his eyes flicked down to the folder in his hands.

"There was a young woman here, but she left some time ago."

"Please alert us if you see her again,"
the voice said before the phone clicked and the line went dead.

He leveled his gaze at me. "What's going on?"

"Do you want the truth or something you might actually believe? Because what's really going on is practically unbelievable."

He cocked an eyebrow.

"Whatever I say, you're not going to believe me. Sometimes I can barely believe it's happening myself. I think my life's a dream and that I'll wake up in the morning and go to school like a normal girl, but it's not. I want to know what happened to my mom."

He leaned forward in his chair, staring straight into my eyes. "Five years ago, my mother died. They said it was from natural causes, but I didn't trust them. When I had the chance, I started digging and found exactly the same results as I found today…all of her files were wiped. This is a hospital. Data doesn't just disappear. I kept searching and one day I stumbled across proof that she was murdered—just like your mom.

"I found these—" he gestured to another few papers, "—by matching the patient number on here with the ones in the labs. Someone tried to cover it up, but the person didn't completely hide their tracks. A toxicology report indicates there was
Oxyuranus microlepidotus
venom in your mom's bloodstream, an incredibly toxic poison from an Australian snake.

"There were no bite marks on her body and no reason why her condition would suddenly deteriorate, and yet they still ruled this a death due to her genetic condition. Someone tried to hide the evidence that contradicted that finding," he explained.

I had expected something like this but still wasn't ready for it. After finding out what was supposed to happen on the day she died, I'd known something was wrong in my gut. Who would have used snake venom on my mother?

A sound interrupted my train of thought. Someone, no, some
people
were running toward us. The hard, thin soles of their shoes slapped sharply against the linoleum as they sprinted.

There were at least three of them, maybe four. They were followed by someone else; a woman, if the heels clacking against the hard flooring meant what I thought they did.

"They're coming," I exclaimed. "I have to go!" Grabbing the folders in one hand, I threw myself at the door, elbowed the button on the side and pulled. The door didn't move. I pushed it again. The door stayed locked.

They knew I was here. They'd shut us in.

"Shit!" I gasped, looking at Jake. I'd brought an innocent guy into the middle of my problems. "Is there any other way out?" I asked, gesturing to the other door.

He shook his head. "It's a bathroom."

There was nothing else to do. I was going to have to face them straight on. Searching the room, I grabbed the first thing I could use as a weapon, the chair I'd been sitting on.

"No, get under the desk. I'll get rid of them." I hesitated, but he pushed me. "It'll be fine. I work here." He may have convinced himself of those words, but I still wasn't.

"Just make sure you leave a clear path for me if I need it," I ordered, crouching behind the wooden frame that held the computer.

I could hear them outside. They were arguing among themselves about whether to come in now or call for back up.

"There's only one and the boy won't be any trouble," a sharp voice chastised. From the sounds I judged them to have fanned out on the other side of the door.