What Lies Within by Morris James

Author:Morris, James [Morris, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kindle Press
Published: 2015-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Shelley waited until her father left for work and, sure that she was alone, cracked the file open in front of her. School would have to wait. This was what she knew: She was an experiment for reasons unknown. She was adopted and her sperm donor was a doctor of genetics. The other twelve, she could safely assume, were part of the same experiment. All the births were the offspring of “donor number 1021.” All the births were adopted through the same adoption agency.

As she moved through the file, she found a timeline of sorts.

A list of thirteen names. Hers, Matthew Ridge, and eleven others she didn’t recognize, along with their dates of birth—all around the same few months, making them the same age. Half were boys and half were girls, with one extra girl.

Why the one extra?

And if one was a control group and the other the experiment, which was which? There was no way to differentiate between the two.

Addresses were listed next to their names, all scattered throughout the United States, some in Southern California, others in Chicago, New York, and small towns in the South she’d never heard of.

If I looked through photo albums of the others, would I find photos of the doctor in the background, a ghost that haunted us all?

She considered if this experiment was just a record of how adoptive children fared once they grew up—to see if they did as well in school or whether they became smokers when compared with nonadoptive children. The fly in the ointment was that the study originated from a genetics lab. If someone wanted to study the outcome of adoptive children versus nonadoptive children, an adoption center or social work group could spearhead the study. Not a genetics lab.

She continued moving down the page.

Then she saw a list of their dates of death. Eleven names were listed as deceased, including most recently Matthew Ridge.

This wasn’t some dust-covered experiment. Someone had accessed this very file in the last few days.

How long, then, before Dr. Gibson knew the file was missing?

Probably once the next person died.

She stepped back from the file as if it were on fire.

Why were most of them dead? Eleven out of thirteen was no accident.

We’re being targeted.

That’s why Matthew was trying to warn me.

He discovered he was part of an experiment and knew I was, too.

Why are they killing us?

She considered the ordinariness of her life, a home in the suburbs and a daily schedule of school, work, homework, sleep, and repeat, and she thought: I haven’t done anything to deserve this.

She glanced back at the file.

There were two names left: hers and Nireem Perez.

Who was Nireem Perez?

Shelley looked her up on the Internet. Nireem had a Facebook page and lived in Burbank. A senior in high school. A regular girl, it seemed.

Just like me.

A girl doomed to die.

Someone had to warn her.

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