PART 3
For a long moment, the rain was the only sound in my office.
It tapped against the window in thin, silver lines, steady and patient, while the message on my phone seemed to burn through the screen.
Ask Connor what happened to Set A.
Kenneth did not reach for the phone right away. He simply stood there, reading the words as if the space between them mattered as much as the message itself.
I could hear the hospital around us. A cart rolling somewhere down the corridor. A soft page over the speaker system. A child laughing in the distance, high and bright, unaware that the world could split open inside one small office.
“Kirsten,” Kenneth said carefully, “do you recognize this number?”
I shook my head.
My thumb hovered over the screen, but I did not type. My hands, the hands that could start an IV in a moving emergency bay and steady a panicked parent with one touch, suddenly felt disconnected from me.
Set B.
There had been enough grief in believing there were no embryos left. Enough pain in thinking every possible future had ended behind clinic doors and failed phone calls.
But this message suggested something else.
Not just theft.
A system.
A sequence.
Set A. Set B.
More than one hidden truth.
