Chapter 4 - the woman with Melissa’s voice
Firefighters arrived after the jammer was disabled.
Gavin Cole and the Bellweather guard were taken into custody by state investigators. The damaged police station became a crime scene, and Mary moved Roger, Henry, Captain Warren, and the unidentified woman into a county emergency command vehicle.
The woman sat beneath a blanket.
Up close, she looked close to Melissa’s age, but her features were different from the photograph on Roger’s phone.
Her voice, however, was nearly identical.
Roger stood across from her, holding Henry.
“Say my name,” he whispered.
The woman looked at him.
“Roger.”
He flinched.
The pronunciation, the slight pause before the second syllable, even the softness in her tone matched Melissa.
Henry buried his face against his father’s shoulder.
Mary sat beside the woman.
“What is your real name?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you wake up?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Where?”
“A white room.”
“Inside Bellweather?”
“I saw the logo on the uniforms.”
“Did they call you Melissa?”
“Yes.”
“What did they do to you?”
The woman touched the side of her neck.
“There were injections. Lights. Recordings played through headphones. A woman’s voice telling stories about a husband named Roger and a son named Henry.”
Roger’s hands tightened around his child.
“They were teaching you her memories.”
“I think so.”
Captain Warren stood near the door.
“Bellweather has an experimental research division hidden beneath the food-processing facility.”
Mary turned.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“You deleted Roger’s report.”
Warren’s face hardened with shame.
“Yes.”
Roger moved toward him.
Mary stepped between them.
“Why?” she asked.
Warren looked at Henry.
“Because Bellweather threatened my daughter.”
Mary knew Warren’s daughter had died five years earlier.
“Your daughter is dead.”
“That is what Bellweather told me.”
The command vehicle became silent.
Warren continued.
“Eight years ago, my daughter Olivia worked at Bellweather. She discovered medical trials using undocumented workers and homeless patients. Then her car was found in the river.”
“No body,” Mary said.
“No.”
“Like Melissa.”
“Yes.”
Mary remembered the photograph of herself wearing a Bellweather visitor badge.
“What does that have to do with me?”
Warren looked at her.
“You investigated Olivia’s disappearance.”
“I never worked that case.”
“You did.”
“I would remember.”
“They made sure you didn’t.”
Mary felt the air leave her lungs.
Warren explained that eight years earlier, Mary had been a new detective. She had traced Olivia’s last movements to Bellweather’s warehouse. Two days later, Mary was found unconscious beside a county road.
Doctors diagnosed a head injury from a car accident.
Mary remembered the crash.
Or thought she did.
“I was told I struck a deer.”
“There was no deer,” Warren said. “Bellweather treated you at a private clinic before the ambulance arrived.”
Mary touched the faint scar behind her ear.
She had never questioned why the injury hurt during thunderstorms.
“They altered my memory?”
“I don’t know how much.”
The woman beneath the blanket began shaking.
“They can copy voices. They can train faces. They can make people remember things that never happened.”
Roger stared at her.
“Are you saying Melissa could have been replaced before she disappeared?”
The woman looked at Henry.
“I remember singing to him.”
Henry slowly lifted his head.
“What song?”
She began humming.
It was a simple lullaby.
Roger turned pale.
“That was Melissa’s song.”
Henry shook his head.
“Mom sang it wrong.”
The woman stopped.
“How?”
“She always changed the last part because I didn’t like the moon going away.”
The woman tried again.
This time she changed the melody.
Henry began crying.
“That’s how Mom sang it.”
Roger looked from the child to the stranger.
Mary understood the cruelty of what Bellweather had done. They had not simply copied information. They had implanted intimate details—enough to confuse a husband, a child, perhaps even the subject herself.
Warren placed a file on the table.
“We found her in a transport container scheduled to leave for Canada.”
The label read SUBJECT M-12.
“Were there other subjects?” Mary asked.
“Eleven empty rooms.”
“Empty because they escaped?”
Warren shook his head.
“Cleaned.”
The woman stared at the code.
“M-12.”
Roger sat across from her.
“Do you remember our apartment?”
“Yes.”
“What color is the kitchen?”
“Yellow.”
It was gray.
“What did I give Melissa on our wedding day?”
“A silver necklace.”
Roger’s eyes filled.
“It was a paper flower. We had twelve dollars.”
The woman lowered her head.
“I’m sorry.”
Henry stepped down from his father’s arms.
He approached her carefully.
“Do you know where my mom is?”
The woman looked at him.
A tear slid down her cheek.
“I remember a tunnel.”
Everyone listened.
“Under the warehouse. Melissa was there. I think she was teaching me.”
“Teaching you what?” Mary asked.
“How to sound like her.”
Roger gripped the table.
“Why would she help them replace her?”
“She said she had to make me believable.”
“Why?”
The woman looked at Henry.
“So they would send me to your house.”
Roger’s expression broke.
Mary leaned forward.
“What were you supposed to do once you arrived?”
The woman’s hands trembled.
“I was supposed to wait until Roger slept.”
“For what?”
“To take Henry.”
Roger pulled his son back.
The woman began sobbing.
“I didn’t want to. Melissa told me if I followed the plan, she would make sure I remembered enough to protect him.”
“Where were you sent?” Mary asked.
“I wasn’t. Something went wrong. Bellweather locked me away again.”
Captain Warren opened another file.
“We found a surgical schedule. Subject M-12 was due for facial reconstruction.”
Roger looked sick.
“They were going to make her look exactly like Melissa.”
Mary examined the list.
A second procedure appeared beneath it.
SUBJECT H-6.
Henry’s initials.
His age.
His blood type.
The scheduled date was tomorrow.
Mary looked at Warren.
“They planned to take Henry.”
Warren nodded.
“But not to replace him.”
Mary read the final line.
GENETIC COMPATIBILITY CONFIRMED.
PRIMARY DONOR CANDIDATE.
Roger held Henry tighter.
“Donor for whom?”
The unidentified woman stared at the code.
May you like
Then she whispered, “For the woman who owns Bellweather.”
👉 Bellweather had planned to abduct Henry as a medical donor, and Melissa may have cooperated with the replacement program to keep her son alive.
