“What? You heard something about them?” I ask.
Of course, I know she worked there. She told me when she moved here. But that was years ago, a throwaway detail offered over coffee in her first week, and a regular colleague would have forgotten it by now. So I play the part.
She leans forward, lowering her voice as though the walls themselves might be listening. “It’s, um... You do not want to work there.”
“Why?” I ask, making sure my tone sounds lightly curious instead of intensely invested. “They offer better pay.”
“Yeah, well... The pay is not worth a dirty conscience,” she says.
I lean back a fraction. There it is again. That feeling. The same one I got when I listened in on Cassian’s and Talon’s conversation. A tingle in my chest. A quickened beating of my heart. The quiet, almost electric certainty that I’m pulling at a thread connected to something vast and ugly andright.
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes meet mine. I do my best to loosen my shoulders and let them drop. Like I’m disappointed and need to know because this seemed to be the only light at the end of the tunnel. Like I’m broken enough, desperate enough, reckless enough that if she doesn’t convince me, I’ll go anyway. I’ll walk into Westbridge and ask questions and take the position just because I need a change. Any change.
To my relief, it works.
I seem pathetic enough that she breaks through whatever wall she’s built around this, and something in her composure cracks.
“When I first started there,” she says, “everything seemed legitimate. The research wing was small but well-funded. The equipment was good. A strange level of privacy, sure, but I assumed it was just wealthy investors protecting their intellectual property.”
She takes a slow sip of her coffee.
“But after a few months, I started noticing... inconsistencies. Consent forms that didn’t match procedures. Trial participants whose names never appeared on the logs. Protocols that changed overnight with no explanation.”
She glances toward the hallway as if expecting someone to appear there. Her voice drops further.
“The gaps always happened at night.”
A tight, cold line traces down my spine. I hold my expression steady, keep my breathing even. But inside, something locks into place. A click.
“Could it have been simple sloppiness?” I ask. “Mismanagement? Poor filing?”
Marisa shakes her head.
“No. Sloppy is forgetting a signature. These were intentional omissions. Hidden procedures. Altered patient records.” Her fingers clench around the mug, knuckles whitening, and her voice goes tight and thin. “Every time I asked questions, they lied.”
I study her face. Conflict. Guilt. Anxiety. Something deeper underneath all of it, something that looks like shame but moves like fear.
“What exactly did they do?” I ask quietly.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “That’s what scares me most. I never got a clear look. But one night, I walked into an operating room that was supposed to be dark. There was a man on the table. He was sedated and prepped for a procedure that wasn’t listed on any of the charts. When I questioned it, they fired me.”
“Did you report it?” I ask.
“To whom, exactly? The board that funds them?” She lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh but carries nothing funny in it. “Admin would’ve buried the complaint before it left my inbox. If I had pushed harder, I would’ve been blacklisted from every clinical program in the state.”
“That’s... disturbing.”
I feel my gaze trail off into the distance. Disturbing is too small a word. Unacceptable would be closer to the truth. My mind starts to whir with the possibilities of illegal, monstrous procedures one might perform in a clinical environment.
How come that ginger man, Talon, realized something was off straight off the bat and I didn’t?
“Did...” I look back at her. “Did anyone die there that you know of?”
She sucks in her breath and just stares at me. One second. Another.
“I don’t know,” she says at last.
