She broke into the records archive on a Tuesday night. Not dramatically — she used her own access card for surgical records, then a colleague's card left on the scrub room hook, then a USB drive and twelve minutes alone in front of a terminal. She did it calmly. She had thought about the risks for four days and decided the risk of not knowing was larger than the risk of knowing.
In her flat that night, she opened the files.
KALYANI WELLNESS SCHEME — PARTICIPANT REGISTRY
Classification: Internal. Restricted.
Total enrolled (Active): 247
Total enrolled (Historical): 412
Graduated (healthy exit): 18
Graduated (medical exclusion): 31
Graduated (deceased — natural): 7
Graduated (deceased — accidental): 109
Note: All 'accidental' exits are accompanied by external documentation
filed through partner agencies. Compensation protocol: standard.
One hundred and nine people.
Priya set down the glass of water she was holding very carefully, the way you put things down when your hands want to do something and you are choosing not to let them do it yet.
One hundred and nine people, enrolled in a wellness programme that kept them healthy — deliberately, systematically, nutritionally and medically optimised — until someone with enough money wanted an authentic organ. And then they had accidents. And the accidents were documented. And the documentation was filed by partner agencies.
The procurement system was elegant in the way that systems built by intelligent, criminal people were always elegant. The Wellness Scheme was the supply end. Enrolled participants were profiled — blood type, tissue type, organ health scores, compatibility with existing waiting lists. The waiting lists were not the national registry waiting lists. They were private lists, populated by families who had been discreetly informed, through a network of referring physicians and wealth managers, that Kalyani had a premium programme.
The premium programme had a name. In the internal files it was called the Provenance Service.
