Chapter 3 - A VOICE BURIED IN STATICNoah's apartment still looked like his mother might return.
Her books remained stacked beside the sofa.
Her coffee mug sat on a shelf.
Boxes containing twenty years of secrets lined the walls.
Captain Evelyn Shaw placed Claire's cassette into a portable digitizer.
Static filled the room.
Then wind.
Then screaming.
And finally a voice Noah had not heard since childhood home videos.
Thomas Reed.
“The beacon is compromised!”
Noah froze.
Another voice shouted back.
“Follow procedure!”
“Procedure is sending us into the current!”
A violent crash swallowed the recording.
Then came water.
Men shouting.
Thomas counting.
One.
Two.
Three.
Stay with the line.
Then another man's voice emerged.
Weak.
“I know you.”
Thomas answered.
“Save your breath.”
“You look like him.”
A pause.
Then Thomas said:
“That's because he's my brother.”
Noah's stomach tightened.
Thomas Reed had been an only child.
At least according to every record Noah had ever seen.
The stranger continued.
“They lied to you too.”
More static.
Then one word survived.
“Twins.”
The tape ended.
Nobody moved.
Shaw began digging.
Birth records.
Court files.
Hospital archives.
At 2:05 in the morning, she found a sealed lawsuit filed when Thomas was six years old.
Samuel and Lorraine Reed had sued St. Matthew's Children's Foundation.
The allegations included falsified adoption records.
Unlawful separation of siblings.
Two identical male infants.
Baby A went to the Reed family.
Baby B disappeared into a private medical foundation.
That foundation was connected to Harlow Maritime.
Harlow was controlled by Orion.
Noah felt sick.
“They separated my father from his twin.”
Shaw nodded.
“Deliberately.”
“For what?”
She found another document.
Twin behavioral research.
Identical genetics.
Opposite environments.
Lifetime monitoring.
Thomas Reed had grown up in a loving home.
His brother had become a human experiment.
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And twenty-seven years later, that brother had somehow ended up aboard the Harrow.
Passenger Seventeen.
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