Chapter 499 Past Acquaintances
Michael didn't call 911 or reach out to anyone else. Instead, he and Emma carried Charlotte to his car and drove straight to a hospital owned by the Auris Group.
While Charlotte was being treated, Michael started telling Emma how he met Charlotte.
Michael showed Emma a photo of him and Charlotte standing in front of a hospital, both in doctor uniforms, looking serious.
"Is this Sunterra Golden Birch Hospital?" Emma recognized the background; it was the most prestigious private hospital in Sunterra.
Michael nodded, his voice low. "Yeah. When I first got sent to Sunterra by the Russell family, I was ambushed while investigating their overseas assets and got shot three times. Charlotte saved me."
He swiped his finger across the screen, bringing up another photo: Michael lying in a hospital bed, pale-faced, with thick bandages around his chest, while Charlotte checked his wounds.
"It was pouring rain that night. I collapsed in a dark alley, losing so much blood I was about to pass out," Michael's voice carried a distant, reminiscent tone. "Just when I thought I was gonna die there, an umbrella appeared over my head."
Emma could almost see the scene—an alley on a rainy night, blood mixing with rainwater on the cobblestone, a dying Michael, and Charlotte suddenly appearing with a black umbrella.
"She could've just called an ambulance and left, but she recognized I was from Lakeside Haven," Michael put away his phone. "She took me back to her apartment and personally removed the bullets."
"Isn't she a neurologist? How could she handle gunshot wounds?" Emma asked, puzzled.
Michael's lips curled into a bitter smile. "That's fate. Before coming to Sunterra, Charlotte was a military doctor in the Lakeside Haven army, specializing in treating combat injuries. She was dismissed after a medical accident and switched to studying neuroscience."
The lights in the underground parking garage flickered, casting shadows on Michael's sharply defined profile.
For the first time, Emma noticed a faint bulge under his shirt on the left side of his chest—a scar left by a bullet.
"I was unconscious for three days," Michael continued. "When I woke up, I found Charlotte had been going through my investigation notes. I thought she would call the police, given that my notes were all about plans to retaliate against the Russell family."
"But she didn't?"
"Not only did she not call the police, she showed me a document on her computer," Michael's eyes turned sharp. "It was her sister's autopsy report. Ten years ago, her sister died during a clinical trial at a biotech company owned by the Russell Group. The official conclusion was 'sudden cardiac arrest,' but Charlotte was convinced it was due to the drug."
Emma gasped. "QX-309?"
"Exactly." Michael nodded. "Back then, the drug was called PM-12, developed in collaboration with an overseas lab controlled by the Russell Group. Charlotte's sister was one of the first test subjects."
"While I was recovering, Charlotte and I exchanged all our information." The car drove into the night, Michael's voice clear in the enclosed space. "I discovered she had spent ten years investigating her sister's death, even studying neuropharmacology for it."
"So she approached me to investigate too?" Emma clutched the brown paper bag tightly.
"Not entirely." Michael shook his head. "Initially, she wanted to find out the truth about her sister's death, but when she examined you, she found your symptoms were very similar to her sister's. That's when she realized the Russell family was still using that deadly drug."
The car pulled up to a secluded villa. Michael led Emma into the study and took out a stack of documents from a safe.
"Charlotte left these for me," he said, spreading the documents out.
Emma saw a stack of yellowed medical record copies, each with a photo of a different woman, labeled with names, ages, and dates of death.
"Are these all?" Emma's fingers lightly brushed the paper, her throat tight.
"Victims of the QX-309 trials," Michael's voice was as cold as ice. "The first batch of twelve people, all dead within three months of taking the drug. The official records all say 'sudden cardiac arrest' or 'unknown cause of death.'"
Emma counted twelve medical records. The last one showed a girl with a bright smile, named "Natalia Rose"—Charlotte's sister.
"Charlotte spent seven years collecting these." Michael pulled out a bound report from the bottom of the pile. "This is a comparison between the original experimental data and the final report submitted to the FDA."
Emma opened the report and immediately saw the discrepancies.
The original data clearly recorded various adverse reactions in the test subjects: palpitations, hallucinations, seizures, etc., all of which were deleted or altered in the final report.
"This is criminal!" Emma's fingers trembled with anger. "They knew the drug was problematic and still released it?"
"Not only that." Michael took out a small hard drive from the safe. "This contains emails between Scarlett and the lab director. They discussed not how to improve the drug, but how to 'handle' test subjects who showed adverse reactions."
Emma felt dizzy and had to hold onto the table to stay upright.
Although she didn't yet know how the perpetrator had administered the drug to her, it was undeniable that she had traces of the drug in her system.
Maybe through inhalation?
She remembered turning on the air conditioning after getting into the car.
If Scarlett had preloaded the drug into the car's air conditioning system, it would have been easy for her to get poisoned.
And the car she drove that day wasn't hers; George had arranged it for her, worried about her mobility while staying in Lakeside Haven. It would have been easy for Scarlett to prepare the car in advance.
Though she had narrowly escaped, many others had died.
"Why?" She struggled to speak. "Why develop such a deadly drug?"
Michael's eyes grew deep. "Because QX-309 isn't meant to treat illnesses."
He pointed to a line of small text in the report. "Look here—experimental purpose: to explore the metabolic pathways of neurotoxins in the human body."
"Neurotoxins?" Emma felt a chill.
"On the surface, it's a drug for treating neurological disorders, but in reality, it's a disguised neurotoxin." Michael's voice was low and dangerous. "The Russell family is developing biochemical weapons, using unsuspecting patients for human trials."
A flash of lightning suddenly illuminated Michael's sharply defined profile. There was a small scar at the corner of his left eye, faintly visible in the light.
"So, the scar on your face?" She asked instinctively.
"Left from that 'accident' when the Russell family first sent me to Sunterra." Michael sneered. "I used to be afraid of scaring you, so I never told you about my past with the Russell family."
"And I knew you trusted Charles, so I didn't want to be seen as a petty gossip, so I hid some facts. In reality, before my father's car went off the cliff, someone threw a homemade bomb into the car. I barely survived, but my mother didn't make it out."
Emma gasped. The death of Michael's parents was so tragic; no wonder he couldn't let it go.
"You suspect it was Grandpa who did it?"
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