“Hold still, sweetheart, the saw won’t touch your skin,” I told six-year-old Lily as I pressed the electric cutter against her fiberglass leg cast. The blade sliced smoothly through the outer layer…

CHAPTER 1: Sparks in Exam Room 3B

Part 1

“Hold still, sweetheart, the saw won’t touch your skin,” I told six-year-old Lily as I pressed the electric cutter against her fiberglass leg cast. The blade sliced smoothly through the outer layer, but as it reached the inner cotton padding, a sharp metallic screech echoed through Room 3B and bright sparks flew from the tool. I pulled the saw back, parted the scorched cotton, and found a pulse of red light blinking from a heavy black resin container taped directly against her skin—with thin wires extending down into her tissue. Before I could speak, Lily’s foster mother grabbed my forearm and whispered, “Give me that box right now, or neither of us leaves this hospital alive.” I looked down at the blinking transmitter, reached beneath the examination table, and slammed the hospital’s red emergency lockdown button.

The heavy mechanical click echoed beneath the lip of the exam table.

A sharp electronic chime sounded somewhere deep within the wall, hidden behind the acoustic tiles of Room 3B.

Brenda’s eyes went wide.

Her grip on my forearm tightened until her nails bit through my white lab coat, digging straight into my skin.

“What did you just touch?” she hissed.

I didn’t answer.

My eyes stayed fixed on the scorched gap in the blue fiberglass cast.

The smell of burnt polymer and singed cotton hung heavy in the air, sharp and metallic.

Right beneath the inner cotton lining lay a matte-black block, roughly four inches long and encased in heavy, seamless Kevlar-resin.

In the center of the block, a single crimson LED pulsed at steady, one-second intervals.

*Pulse.*

*Pulse.*

Two ultra-thin silver micro-wires snaked out from the bottom edge of the resin box, vanishing directly beneath the skin of Lily’s right shin.

There was no medical bandage around the entry point.

There was no surgical stitch.

The wires were embedded directly into living tissue.

Lily didn’t make a sound.

The six-year-old sat perfectly motionless on the examination paper, her small fingers white-knuckled as she squeezed the edge of the vinyl mattress.

Her dark eyes moved back and forth between my face and the black box, wide with a silent, terrifying familiarity.

She had seen this before.

“I asked you a question, doctor,” Brenda snapped.

She shoved me back hard against the metal supply cabinet.

A stack of sterile gauze packs and stainless steel trays rattled violently against the wall.

Brenda reached into the pocket of her oversized coat and pulled out a heavy black plastic device with twin metal prongs protruding from the tip.

A blue arc of electricity snapped between the prongs with a deafening crack.

The smell of ozone instantly filled the small room.

“Step away from the child,” Brenda ordered, her voice trembling with an unstable mixture of rage and terror.

“Brenda, listen to me,” I said, holding my hands up slowly at chest height. “Put that down.”

“You don’t understand what you’re looking at!” she screamed.

Sweat was pouring down her forehead, ruining her smeared makeup.

Her chest heaved under her coat.

“Give me the drive! Cut the rest of the cast off and hand me the box!”

“I am the Chief Orthopedic Resident at Boston Children’s,” I said, keeping my voice low and completely level. “I am not touching that cast again until a surgical team examines her.”

“You think you’re in control here?” Brenda stepped forward, pointing the taser directly at my throat.

The blue spark arced again.

“Who put this inside her leg, Brenda?” I demanded.

“That’s none of your business!”

“She is six years old!” I snapped, stepping between her and the exam table to block her view of Lily. “Someone cut open her leg and installed hardware directly against her bone! Look at her!”

“They promised me it was just a tracker!” Brenda cried out, her voice cracking as her composure fractured. “They said it was standard monitoring for state custody wards! They paid me fifteen thousand dollars in cash!”

Fifteen thousand dollars.

My stomach dropped.

“Who paid you?” I asked.

“If I don’t walk out of this door with that black box in five minutes, they will destroy me,” she whispered, her hands shaking so violently the taser wavered in the air. “They know where I live. They know about my son.”

“There are security cameras in every corridor of this building,” I told her, holding her gaze. “You are not leaving this room with this child.”

Above the door frame, a heavy magnetic relay clicked.

*THUD.*

The solid steel emergency lockdown bar dropped into place inside the frame with the heavy sound of a bank vault closing.

The digital indicator above the door handle instantly flipped from green to a solid, unblinking crimson.

The silent panic alarm had registered on the hospital’s main security grid.

Exam Room 3B was now entirely sealed from the outside hallway.

Brenda whipped her head toward the door, her face draining of all remaining color.

She lunged for the stainless steel handle and yanked it with all her strength.

It didn’t budge an inch.

“No,” she sobbed, throwing her weight against the reinforced door. “No, no, no! Open this door!”

She turned back toward me, her eyes wild, raising the crackling taser directly at my face as the red emergency light above us bathed the entire room in blood-colored light.

Part 2

Before she could press the trigger, the heavy electronic override chime screamed through the speaker above the door.

The steel lock disengaged with a loud pneumatic hiss.

The door burst open, and Chief Security Officer Raymond Holt surged into the room with two armed guards right behind him.

Before Brenda could turn, Holt grabbed her right wrist, twisted the taser out of her grip, and slammed her face-first against the wall.

The taser clattered across the tile floor. Within seconds, the guards had her hands cuffed tightly behind her back.

“Dr. Vance, are you alright?” Holt asked, his voice low and steady.

“I’m fine,” I said, stepping back to cover Lily with a sterile sheet. “Keep her away from the table.”

I pulled my diagnostic tablet off the desk and scanned the small digital tracking code embedded in the lower rim of Lily’s fiberglass cast. Every orthopedic application in the hospital was logged into the central database.

I waited three seconds for the medical record to pull up on the screen.

When the file opened, my breath hitched in my chest.

Applied: 42 days ago.

Location: Pediatric Orthopedic Vault B.

I looked down at the practitioner’s digital signature at the bottom of the page, and the room seemed to tilt.

The cast hadn’t been applied by an orthopedic resident.

It was signed by Nurse Clara Vance.

My cousin.

My hands started to shake. Clara had worked in pediatric care with me for seven years. Four days ago, she was killed in a hit-and-run crash in downtown Boston—an unsolved hit-and-run that police were still treating as an accident.

“Marcus?” Holt asked, stepping up beside me. “What did you find?”

I held out the tablet, my voice barely a whisper. “Clara put this cast on her six weeks ago.”

Holt’s jaw tightened, but his expression didn’t change to shock. It changed to dark confirmation.

He stepped closer, leaning in so the guards framing Brenda couldn’t hear us.

“Marcus, four days ago, right before she died, Clara accessed the restricted orthopedic vault off-hours twice,” Holt said. “She knew what was sealed inside this child’s leg, and that’s why she’s dead.”

CHAPTER 2: The Foster Mother’s Ledger

The metal door of the hospital’s basement security room clicked shut at 4:15 PM.

Brenda Miller sat across from me and Detective Sarah Jenkins, her wrists resting on the cold steel table. Her hands trembled so hard her fingernails clicked against the polished metal.

“I didn’t put anything inside her leg,” Brenda sobbed, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve. “I don’t know what kind of machine that is!”

Detective Jenkins leaned forward, placing both palms flat on the table. “You brought a six-year-old child into an emergency room with a taser in your jacket, Brenda. Start talking, or you’re walking out of here in federal handcuffs.”

Brenda collapsed forward, burying her face in her arms.

“They paid me,” she choked out. “Fifteen thousand dollars in cash. An anonymous man called every Monday. He told me to drop Lily off at a private clinic downtown every Tuesday morning for ‘routine adjustments.’”

She reached into her coat pocket with two fingers, pulling out a worn, black spiral notebook.

“I wrote down every payment,” Brenda whispered. “Every date, every address, every drop-off point. I was underwater. I owed forty-two thousand dollars to lenders, and they said they’d pay it off if I just kept my mouth shut.”

I pulled the notebook toward me. Page after page listed dates spanning the last six weeks, matching the exact timeframe Lily’s cast had been on her leg.

Before Detective Jenkins could grab the ledger, the overhead fluorescent lights flickered twice.

A high-pitched siren wailed through the ventilation ducts, and the room’s indicator lights shifted from blue to a harsh, flashing orange.

An automated female voice echoed from the intercom: “Code Yellow biological isolation protocols engaged. All basement sectors locked down immediately.”

“Sterling,” I said, standing up so fast my chair hit the wall. “He’s shutting down the wing.”

CHAPTER 3: Decrypting Room 402

Agent Raymond Holt grabbed the black resin drive off the security desk and pushed us into the corridor before the heavy iron fire doors slammed down.

“This way,” Holt said, his voice flat and calm. “Bio-engineering Lab 402 is on an isolated sub-grid. The isolation locks won’t reach it for another three minutes.”

I carried Lily, wrapping her small arms tightly around my neck. She didn’t make a sound, but her fingers clutched my medical coat like a vice.

Inside Lab 402, two technicians plugged the scorched resin container into a hardened data extraction terminal. The laser reader whirred, cutting through the heavy encryption layers.

“Data partition opened,” the lead technician announced, pointing at the monitor screen. “It’s loaded with 3.2 gigabytes of encrypted telemetry logs.”

“Look at the patient IDs,” Detective Jenkins said, pointing at the top line.

My stomach dropped. The file didn’t just contain Lily’s biometric markers. It listed twelve distinct identification numbers, all tagged as state foster children under the age of eight.

“The real-time data shows structural force measurements,” the technician muttered, zooming in on a series of skeletal diagrams. “Doctor… look at the initial injury entry.”

I stared at the medical rendering of Lily’s leg from six weeks ago. The fracture line was far too clean.

“It wasn’t an accident,” I said, my voice shaking with rage. “Her fibula was intentionally fractured by someone with surgical training—just to justify applying a heavy fiberglass cast to hide the telemetry box.”

Before the technician could back up the file, the terminal’s screen went completely black.

The overhead fluorescent panels died instantly, plunging the entire sub-basement into deep red emergency lighting. The central switchboard had cut all power to the lab.

CHAPTER 4: The Tunnels Beneath the Ward

“They’re monitoring central power consumption,” Holt said, pulling a heavy tactical flashlight from his belt. “Sterling knows we’re down here.”

I pulled Lily closer against my chest, feeling the fast, steady rhythm of her heartbeat.

“We need to get her to the sterile ICU suite in the east wing,” I said. “It runs on an independent generator system. They can’t kill power to pediatric intensive care without triggering an automatic state police response.”

Holt used a master keycard to release the magnetic latch on a narrow access door hidden behind the lab’s storage racks.

We stepped into the hospital’s underground utility tunnels. Steam pipes hissed along the exposed concrete ceiling, and distant heavy footsteps echoed down the damp hallway.

“Private security,” Detective Jenkins whispered, unholstering her service weapon. “Sterling brought in outside guards.”

We moved quickly through the shadows, winding through two hundred yards of narrow maintenance corridors. The air grew warmer, heavy with the smell of engine grease and old dust.

As we reached the concrete staircase leading up to the pediatric isolation wing, a bright LED flashlight beam cut through the dark, blinding us instantly.

“That’s far enough, Marcus,” a familiar, quiet voice called out from the top of the stairs.

Dr. Arthur Sterling stood on the landing above us, dressed in a tailored gray suit. Two thick-necked security men in dark uniforms stood on either side of him, their hands resting on their holsters.

“Hand over the child and the drive,” Dr. Sterling said cleanly. “And we can still frame this as an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

CHAPTER 5: The Security Chief’s Debt

“You’re breaching four federal human rights statutes, Arthur,” I called up the stairs, keeping my body between the guards and Lily. “We have the telemetry logs. We know about the twelve children.”

Dr. Sterling smiled, a cold, empty expression that didn’t reach his eyes.

“A hospital board trustee executing an emergency containment protocol outranks a chief resident, Marcus,” Sterling said softly. “Seize them.”

The two guards moved down the concrete steps.

Before they took three paces, Agent Holt stepped forward, drawing his sidearm in one fluid motion and leveling it directly at Sterling’s chest.

“Stand down,” Holt commanded.

“You’re on my payroll, Raymond,” Sterling sneered, not moving an inch. “Don’t ruin your pension for a dead nurse’s delusion.”

“I was never on your payroll, Sterling,” Holt said.

Holt reached back with his left hand and slammed a heavy brass wheel mounted to the utility wall, spinning it counter-clockwise with maximum force.

A high-pressure steam valve burst open right beside the stairs.

A deafening roar filled the tunnel as white, scalding vapor flooded the narrow staircase, instantly blinding Sterling and his two guards. The men shouted, staggering backward into the dark.

“Move! Now!” Holt barked, grabbing my arm and shoving us up the side maintenance ladder toward the ICU access door.

We scrambled through the hatch, slamming the heavy steel door shut behind us and locking the manual deadbolt just as the guards hit the frame from the other side.

CHAPTER 6: Bone-Deep Biometrics

By 6:30 PM, we had locked ourselves inside the sterile ICU Isolation Suite 402. The heavy lead-lined doors sealed out the rest of the hospital.

I placed Lily gently on the examination table and adjusted the mobile digital fluoroscopy unit over her leg.

“Hold still for just a second, sweetheart,” I whispered, holding her hand while I stepped behind the protective acrylic screen.

The high-resolution X-ray image rendered on the digital monitor within seconds.

I leaned closer, my breath catching in my throat.

The fiberglass cast and the outer resin drive were gone, but the screen showed a second metallic object deep within the tissue.

A tiny, twelve-millimeter titanium capsule was bolted directly into the outer cortex of Lily’s fibula bone.

A microscopic wire extended up toward her central nervous system, pulsing with high-frequency signals.

“It’s an active sub-dermal telemetry node,” I said, pointing out the metallic anchor to Detective Jenkins. “It’s transmitting live biological and neurological data directly out of her bone marrow.”

“Transmitting to where?” Jenkins asked, leaning over the screen.

“To Apex BioTech,” Holt answered, checking the perimeter monitor near the door. “They aren’t just tracking location. They’re testing experimental neural interface hardware on state foster kids because no one checks on them.”

The suite intercom chimed softly.

Detective Jenkins checked her phone and turned toward me, her jaw clenched tight.

“Apex BioTech’s legal team just entered the hospital lobby,” Jenkins said. “And they brought federal paperwork.”

CHAPTER 7: The Threat on Room 12

Detective Jenkins pulled a stack of printed police reports from her leather folder and laid them next to the fluoroscopy monitor.

“I just got the forensic breakdown from Brenda’s cell phone records,” Jenkins said. “Ten days ago, Dr. Sterling met Brenda at a diner on 4th Street.”

“What did he say to her?” I asked, adjusting Lily’s intravenous line.

“He didn’t offer her money at first,” Jenkins replied. “He pulled up records showing her sixteen-year-old biological son was facing felony drug possession charges. Sterling told her he owned the private testing lab reviewing the evidence. He promised to make the charges vanish if she kept Lily in the study—or send her son to prison for ten years if she missed an appointment.”

I looked down at Lily, who was staring up at the ceiling lights, completely silent. The sheer cruelty of the operation was staggering.

“I’m uploading this entire Fluoroscopy scan and Brenda’s ledger to my university research drive,” I said, sitting down at the central terminal. “If we mirror it across public medical servers, they can’t erase it.”

I initiated the file transfer. The progress bar crept up slowly: *12%… 34%… 58%…*

Suddenly, the screen flashed red. An alarm chimed on the system interface.

*TRANSFER TERMINATED: EXTERNAL FIREWALL INJECTION DETECTED.*

“They’re blocking external outbound traffic from the hospital’s main server,” I said, hitting the key pad in frustration. “Sterling is isolating our IP addresses.”

“They don’t need to erase it,” Holt said from the doorway, his eyes fixed on the hallway monitor. “They’re coming to take it by force.”

CHAPTER 8: Fake Authority at the Gate

At 7:45 PM, heavy footsteps echoed outside the ICU suite corridor.

Three men in sharp black suits, accompanied by two armed off-duty state marshals, lined up outside the reinforced glass doors of the ICU.

The lead attorney held up a thick paper file stamped with a gold state seal pressed against the glass.

“Dr. Marcus Vance!” the attorney called out through the external intercom. “I am legal counsel for Apex BioTech. We have an emergency conservatorship order issued by the County Magistrate.”

He tapped the document with his pen.

“This order grants Apex BioTech immediate custody of the patient, Lily Miller, for specialized medical transport to a private facility. Open these doors immediately, or you will be arrested for medical kidnapping.”

I didn’t move. “That child stays right here.”

“You have five minutes to comply, Dr. Vance!” the lawyer warned.

I grabbed my phone and dialed my mother, retired Probate Court Judge Evelyn Vance, patching her directly into the ICU’s high-definition video monitor.

“Mom,” I said as her face appeared on the large screen. “I’m sending you a digital copy of the conservatorship warrant they just pressed against the glass.”

Judge Vance put on her reading glasses, scanning the image instantly. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

“Marcus, look at the bottom left seal,” Judge Vance said, her voice cutting through the room with sharp authority. “That isn’t a Superior Court seal. It’s an administrative emergency order signed by a retired probate magistrate who hasn’t held a courtroom in three years.”

She straightened up in her chair.

“That warrant is entirely fraudulent. It carries zero legal weight. Tell those marshals that if they cross that threshold, I will have the Chief Judge of the State Appeals Court hold them in personal contempt within twenty minutes.”

CHAPTER 9: The Shell Corporation

While the attorneys argued outside the glass doors, Judge Evelyn Vance kept working on her desktop terminal at home.

“Marcus,” my mother’s voice came through the terminal speaker ten minutes later. “I just pulled the Secretary of State’s corporate registry files for Apex BioTech.”

“What did you find?” Detective Jenkins asked, stepping up to the camera.

“Apex BioTech isn’t a standalone corporation,” Judge Vance explained, bringing up a complex corporate tree on the shared screen. “It is owned by a holding entity called Aegis Holdings LLC, registered out of Delaware.”

She tapped a key, expanding the registry list for Aegis Holdings.

“Aegis Holdings has three managing directors,” my mother said softly. “The primary equity holder, owning thirty-five percent of the voting stock, is Dr. Arthur Sterling.”

The room went completely quiet.

“Forty-five million dollars,” I said, remembering the hospital’s new pharmaceutical partnership announcement from last month. “He wasn’t just managing the hospital. He was using state wards as living, unapproved clinical test subjects to validate his own company’s hardware before selling it to international buyers.”

Detective Jenkins pulled out her encrypted police radio and switched to an open SVU channel.

“This is Detective Jenkins, SVU,” she said clearly into the microphone. “I need an immediate federal hold placed on Dr. Arthur Sterling and the legal team currently standing in the Pediatric ICU east wing. We have documentary proof of systematic child endangerment and financial fraud.”

“Copy that, Detective,” the dispatcher replied. “Federal agents are en route to your location.”

CHAPTER 10: The Whistleblower’s Last Recording

While Detective Jenkins secured the perimeter, Holt sat at the primary diagnostic terminal in the room, working on the original resin drive’s encrypted storage layer.

“There’s a hidden partition here,” Holt said, typing in a rapid sequence of commands. “It wasn’t created by Apex BioTech. It was placed here manually by a different user tag.”

He glanced up at me. “The user tag is C_Vance.”

My heart stopped. “Clara.”

Holt pressed enter. An audio playback window popped up on the monitor screen.

A timestamp appeared on the digital readout: *FOUR DAYS AGO – 11:14 PM.*

Clara’s voice echoed from the small desktop speakers, trembling but clear: *”I saw the fluoroscopy scans, Dr. Sterling. I know what you put inside that little girl’s leg. I know about the other eleven children.”*

Then came Sterling’s cold, calm voice: *”You’re a brilliant nurse, Clara. But you lack vision. Project Aegis will revolutionize pediatric neurological treatment globally. You can take a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar consulting fee and keep quiet, or you can destroy your career.”*

*”I’m going to the state police,”* Clara said firmly on the recording. *”I’m taking the drive tonight.”*

The sound of a heavy wooden door slamming echoed through the speaker.

A moment later, Sterling’s voice returned, speaking quietly into a telephone receiver: *”She has the prototype log. She just left my office. Take care of it on 5th Street before she reaches the police station. Make it look fast.”*

The recording cut to static.

I stood frozen, my hands trembling violently. Clara hadn’t died in a random hit-and-run accident. She was murdered because she refused to let them hurt Lily.

CHAPTER 11: Electromagnetic Trapping

“He’s heading for the central radiology suite,” Holt said, looking up from his security feed monitor. “Sterling knows the federal agents are ten minutes away. He brought a portable EMP unit to wipe the local server racks before they arrive.”

“If he fires an EMP near the main servers,” I said, “it will destroy the original digital audio files and the fluoroscopy data.”

“Not if we move the physical drive to a place where his EMP is useless,” Holt said, a dark smile touching his lips.

I grabbed the resin drive and looked at Holt. “Suite 4.”

“Suite 4,” Holt agreed. “The high-field MRI room.”

We ran through the sterile corridors, leading Sterling’s team directly toward the heavy shielded doors of MRI Suite 4. Detective Jenkins took up a defensive position near the main double doors, holding her badge high.

“Sterling!” I shouted down the central hallway, holding the black resin drive high above my head. “The master recording is right here! Clara recorded everything!”

Sterling turned the corner, his face pale and eyes wild. He held a heavy, grey metallic box equipped with a wide directional dish—a military-grade electromagnetic pulse emitter.

“Give me that drive, Marcus!” Sterling yelled, charging forward with his two security officers right behind him.

I ducked inside MRI Suite 4, dropping the drive on the center of the padded patient scanner bed.

Sterling and his two guards burst into the room behind me, raising the EMP device high to point it directly at the scanner bed.

“It ends now!” Sterling screamed.

Holt slammed the thick, lead-lined door behind them, locking the pneumatic pressure seal from the outside control booth.

CHAPTER 12: Neutralized

“Engage the magnet!” Holt shouted through the intercom.

Inside the control booth, Holt slammed his palm down on the primary override switch, driving the 3.0 Tesla superconducting magnet to one hundred percent power instantly.

A deep, low hum vibrated through the floorboards.

Before Sterling could press the trigger on his EMP device, the massive magnetic field seized every piece of ferrous metal in the room.

The heavy metallic EMP tool was ripped out of Sterling’s hands with immense force, flying six feet through the air and slamming into the center of the MRI gantry with a deafening *CRASH*.

The magnetic force instantly crushed the metal casing of the EMP tool, destroying its internal coils before it could emit a pulse.

Sterling’s security guards were yanked off their feet as their metal belt buckles, hand cuffs, and tactical equipment were pulled directly toward the magnetic core.

Sterling himself was pinned flat against the front of the scanner frame, the metal buttons on his suit jacket locked firmly against the outer shell.

The intense magnetic field instantly wiped the flash memory chips in every cell phone and digital storage device inside Sterling’s pockets.

The outer double doors burst open.

A squad of Boston PD tactical officers and federal FBI agents swarmed into the control room, their weapons raised.

“Federal agents! Don’t move!” an FBI tactical leader shouted, pointing his rifle at the observation glass.

Sterling struggled against the massive magnetic pull, trapped, disarmed, and completely helpless.

“Dr. Arthur Sterling,” Detective Jenkins said through the room’s microphone system. “You are under arrest for first-degree murder conspiracy, child endangerment, and federal human trafficking.”

CHAPTER 13: A Safe Home

By 11:15 PM, the hospital lobby was filled with flashing red and blue lights from over a dozen federal vehicles.

Federal prosecutors confirmed the immediate indictments of Dr. Arthur Sterling, four high-ranking directors of Apex BioTech, and two corrupt state administrators. All twelve foster children targeted by Project Aegis were brought into secure, specialized pediatric care.

Brenda Miller accepted a full guilty plea, handing over her physical ledger and providing state’s evidence that sealed the criminal case against Apex BioTech’s executive board.

The forty-five million dollar partnership was frozen by federal court order, and the state medical board permanently revoked Sterling’s license to practice medicine.

I sat in a quiet recovery room in the east wing, holding a paper cup of warm tea.

Lily sat on the edge of the bed, her leg wrapped in a clean, soft white dressing without any fiberglass, resin, or metal.

For the first time since she had arrived at the hospital, she looked up at me, reached out her small hand, and rested her fingers lightly on my wrist.

She didn’t speak, but she didn’t need to.

Judge Evelyn Vance walked into the room, holding a signed blue folder stamped by the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court.

“It’s done, Marcus,” my mother said softly, placing her hand on my shoulder. “The emergency legal guardianship papers are signed. She’s coming home with us.”

I looked down at Lily’s calm face, feeling the heavy burden of the last twenty-four hours finally lift from my chest. Clara had given her life to protect this child, and now her work was finished.

A physician takes an oath to do no harm, but a guardian takes an oath to let nothing harm you—and today, I became both.