Jane Doe on the Table

Chapter 4 The Name They Erased

No one answered Sarah. The alarm in the hallway kept beeping, and my mother's forceps dripped onto the floor.

Then a slap cracked through the morgue.

My mother's free hand struck Sarah across the face. Sarah stumbled into a cart, one cheek already turning red.

"Don't say that name in this room again. My daughter is at home preparing for the most important night of her life. My daughter is *Chloe*."

She repeated Chloe's name while my blood ran along the table groove.

"The machine is faulty. The sample was contaminated. Run it again."

My father crushed the report in his fist until the printed name disappeared inside his hand. He kept his back to the table. Sarah looked from his fist to my burn scar and the tag tied to my toe.

"Someone did this deliberately." He pointed at the door. "Aria hacked the system. She planted the evidence to ruin tonight and hurt Chloe."

The second test had not started, yet he was already asking the officers to treat me as a suspect.

He pulled out his official phone. "I want a city-wide APB out on Aria Croft. Charge her with obstruction of justice, falsifying evidence, and conspiracy. Find her, cuff her, and bring her to the station. Her game is over."

He issued an All-Points Bulletin for the daughter lying ten feet away from him.

"Chief, wait." A uniformed officer held up a clear evidence bag. My phone sat inside with a spiderweb of cracks across the screen and dried blood on the case. "We found this at the dump site, near the body."

My father reached for it. "There. The proof."

He tore open the bag, already expecting texts that would prove his conspiracy story.

The damaged phone powered on and asked for a passcode.

"Pathetic." He entered Chloe's birthday.

*Password incorrect. Try again.*

He tried my mother's birthday.

*Password incorrect. Try again.*

Their anniversary failed. So did the year they found me and the address of the house. Each guess was a date important to the Croft family, and none of them belonged to me.

"Let me," Julian said. "She was probably obsessed with me, too." His birthday failed.

My father lifted the phone as if to throw it, then stopped. With visible annoyance, he entered his own birthday.

The screen turned green.

*Unlocked.*

His thumb stayed above the screen.

One new file sat on the home screen: an audio recording titled with the date and time of my death.

He glanced at the officers behind him, then put his finger over play.

He still expected my voice to prove him right.

He pressed play.