Read Online The Folded World by Jeff Mariotte - Free Book Online Page A

O’Meara and Vandella to ride in the first, without her. They would just have to fend for themselves; she wasn’t going to make it easy for them to get in the way of her alone-time.
    â€¢   •   •
    Christine Chapel looked up from the computer screen, letting her gaze float toward the ceiling as she tried to wrap her thoughts around what she had learned. She sat that way for only a few moments, though; there was an obvious urgency to the information, and it had to be shared with Doctor McCoy as soon as possible. She only hoped she wasn’t too late. She punched the sickbay’s intercom controls and paged Doctor McCoy, but instead of his voice, Uhura reported back. “His shuttle has just left the hangar deck,” the voice said. “Do you want me to patch you through?”
    â€œNo, thank you,” she said. Cutting the connection, she added, “Damn it all!”
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Neola Aimenthe asked. She was a medical assistant who was helping Chapel in sickbay.
    â€œOh, I was hoping to catch him before he boarded the shuttle. I don’t want to talk to him there—they’re so small, and there’s no privacy. People are entitled to have their medical records kept private.”
    â€œOf course,” Aimenthe said. She was small anddark, with eyes that might have appeared furtive in a less open face. As it was, they made her look lively, if a little unfocused. But she knew her medicine, and Chapel thought she’d make a fine ship’s doctor one of these days. “It’s about a patient?”
    â€œMiranda Tikolo,” Chapel said.
    â€œOh, she’s nice. Troubled, though.”
    â€œThat’s not the half of it,” Chapel said. “What I just learned . . .”
    â€œWhat?”
    Chapel hesitated. Aimenthe was part of the medical team, just as much as she was. She hadn’t been around for as long as Chapel or Doctor McCoy, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be trusted. “I’m not even sure Tikolo knows, herself. I doubt that she does, in fact.”
    â€œKnows what? You make it all sound so mysterious.”
    Chapel let out a sigh and tapped the top of the computer. “When she was just a year old, her parents divorced. Her mother remarried, fairly quickly, and her father—I suspect this was one of the issues that caused marital problems in the first place—had a psychotic break. Miranda was not quite three years old. She was home one night with her mother, her new stepfather, and her older stepbrothers and sister. Her biological father came to their home, enraged. He had a knife hidden in his coat. The stepfather opened the door, and Miranda’s father slashed his throat. He stepped over the man and into the house. His ex-wifecharged but he buried the knife in her eye, straight to the brain. Then he started in on the kids.”
    â€œThat’s awful!” Aimenthe said. She had her fist up in front of her mouth. “I mean, awful doesn’t begin to describe it, but—”
    â€œI know,” Chapel said. “I’m not sure there are words in our language, or any other. The stepsister grabbed little Miranda, who was just a toddler, and carried her into a bedroom. She hid her in a closet, behind some coats, and closed the door. When she got back into the main room, her brothers were both dead. She was next.”
    â€œAnd Miranda?”
    â€œI’m coming to that. A neighbor noticed three days later that he hadn’t seen anyone in the family, and he called the authorities. They discovered the bodies, and found Miranda in the closet. Her father confessed as soon as they approached him. He said he didn’t know where the toddler had been hidden, and he was afraid to spend any time looking. He would have killed her, too. Miranda had not budged from the closet for those three days, and she didn’t talk for seven weeks after that. But she