Chapter 8 - The Missing YearEmily lost almost an entire year of memory after Laura’s car burned.
She remembered waking in Claire’s parents’ home.
She remembered Thomas visiting once, standing outside her bedroom because she screamed when men entered.
She remembered doctors calling the condition trauma-induced dissociation.
She did not remember a rehabilitation center.
Hospital records now showed she spent eleven months at St. Catherine’s under the name Emma Ward.
Dr. Alan Cole’s father supervised her treatment.
The program used medication later associated with memory suppression.
Thomas had been told Emily lived with Claire’s family during that year.
Claire’s parents had been told she remained in protective federal care.
Both stories were false.
Emily had been inside the same hidden medical network that later held Laura.
The photograph with Savannah might be real.
Savannah was approximately eight at the time.
She could have visited under Bennett’s supervision.
A recovered therapy log described two girls attending “sibling integration sessions.”
Patient E.W.
Patient S.C.
The sessions aimed to determine whether shared maternal attachment could be created artificially.
Emily stopped reading.
“They experimented on us.”
Thomas looked devastated.
“I should have demanded access.”
“You were threatened.”
“I was also a prosecutor. I believed procedure would protect you.”
Hollow Crown controlled the procedure.
Savannah agreed to undergo independent memory evaluation. She recalled a frightened older girl who sang to her during thunderstorms.
The girl had called herself Emily.
Savannah believed the sessions were dreams until seeing the photograph.
Their emotional connection may have begun in childhood, then been erased from both lives.
That did not make them sisters biologically.
It made them two children used inside the same experiment.
The missing final page of Laura’s letter remained with Savannah.
She finally surrendered it.
Savannah is Miriam’s daughter and your sister through the only bond Hollow Crown cannot define: the year you survived together.
Laura did not claim shared biology.
She called them sisters because they had protected each other during confinement.
Emily read the sentence.
Savannah looked away.
“You used that bond to get close enough to kick me.”
“I didn’t remember it.”
“You knew Laura called us sisters.”
“Yes.”
“Then why hide the page?”
“Because if you hated me completely, Bennett couldn’t use me to reach you again.”
“That was another decision you made for me.”
“Yes.”
Savannah’s remorse did not create immediate forgiveness.
Emily agreed only that the truth belonged in the record.
The medical files revealed a more urgent danger.
During Emily’s missing year, doctors collected reproductive tissue under the pretense of hormonal testing.
Hollow Crown stored it.
Years later, Marcus’s fertility clinic used those samples during Emily’s pregnancy.
Emily believed she conceived naturally.
The early prenatal file now showed an embryo-transfer procedure coded as a routine endometrial examination.
She had been sedated.
Marcus had signed.
Emily stared at the record.
“You implanted this baby without telling me?”
Marcus attended the interview by video from his attorney’s office.
His face collapsed.
“I thought the embryo was ours.”
“You knew there was an embryo.”
“Yes.”
“You let me believe the pregnancy happened naturally.”
“You were devastated after the previous losses.”
“We never had previous losses.”
Marcus froze.
Emily had no memory of miscarriages.
He claimed she suffered two early pregnancies and physicians advised against discussing them because grief worsened her anxiety.
No legitimate records existed.
Dr. Alan Cole had manufactured a reproductive history to justify hidden procedures.
The unborn child’s genetic origin became uncertain.
Marcus might be the biological father.
Emily might be the biological mother.
Stored material from the missing year could involve someone else.
The Whitmore Covenant recognized Laura’s maternal line, but Hollow Crown could manipulate genetic ambiguity to challenge ownership later.
A final clinic file listed the embryo code:
LC-WV-2.
Laura Cole? Laura Whitmore? Vale?
Claire traced the code to a private archive controlled by Bennett.
Bennett refused access.
A warrant was prepared.
Before police reached the facility, it caught fire.
Security footage showed Eleanor Vale leaving through a side entrance carrying a cryogenic case.
She entered a waiting car.
Laura was driving.
The two women had reunited voluntarily.
They were not fleeing each other.
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They were working together again.
👉 Emily recovered evidence that her pregnancy began through an undisclosed embryo transfer, while Laura and Eleanor escaped together with the only samples capable of proving whose child she carried.
