Chapter 3
The basement level of the hospital smelled differently than the upper floors; it was a mix of damp concrete, industrial cleaning agents, and the dry, dusty scent of long-forgotten archives. David pushed open the heavy wooden door marked Records & Administration and stepped into a room lit only by the pale amber glow of emergency lights. Rows of tall metal filing cabinets stretched into the darkness like silent sentinels. The silence here was heavy, undisturbed by the constant hum of medical machinery that defined the rest of the building.
David’s hand brushed against the cool metal of a filing cabinet as he navigated the narrow aisle. He was looking for nothing in particular, driven purely by an inexplicable compulsion that had taken hold of him ever since Leo spoke those chilling words in the delivery room. Your father switched the babies. Richard Miller had been a respected physician at this very hospital for over four decades, a man known for his calm demeanor and unblemished reputation. Yet, David had spent his entire childhood sensing a cold, calculating distance behind his father’s polite smiles. Richard had kept meticulous records of everything, maintaining a private office in the hospital’s oldest wing long after his retirement.
A narrow streak of light caught David’s eye. It came from beneath a closed door at the far end of the room, bearing a faded brass plaque that read Dr. R. Miller - Private Archive. David’s breath caught in his throat. He had been told this room was cleared out and locked permanently after his father’s passing. He stepped closer, noticing that the brass lock had been neatly picked, the mechanism jammed open with a small piece of plastic. Someone had been here recently.
Pushing the door open slowly, David stepped inside. The room was surprisingly dusty, preserved in a state of arrested development. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with heavy medical journals and leather-bound notebooks. In the center of the room sat a large mahogany desk, and upon it lay an open ledger. The pages were yellowed with age, but the ink near the bottom was fresh, written in the sharp, sloping cursive that David knew better than his own.
May you like
He approached the desk, his heart pounding against his ribs like a trapped bird. He tilted his head down to read the entries, his eyes scanning the neat columns of dates, names, and medical codes. Near the bottom of the page, dated twenty-eight years ago, was his own birth name, followed by a series of strange annotations that made no sense at all. Beside it, written in the margin with a sharp pencil, was a single phrase that made the blood run cold in his veins: The lineage must be preserved at any cost.
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