The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 364

A few minutes later, Garrison walked out the hospital's main entrance.

Quinn was waiting by the car. She wore a simple beige trench coat, her hair pulled back into a neat, effortless ponytail. Seeing Garrison approach, she immediately handed over the car keys. "You boys go ahead. Archie has been begging for sushi the entire drive. I've already booked a table."

Garrison shot her a look. Since the day he struck her in his office, she genuinely hadn't taken a single step inside the hospital. She had kept her word.

He took the keys. "Let's go, Archie."

Archie climbed into the passenger seat.

As Garrison pulled the car out of the parking lot, he glanced in the rearview mirror. Quinn was still standing under the sycamore tree by the hospital entrance, waving at them.

The evening sunset bathed her pale trench coat in a soft, tangerine glow, making her look quiet and picturesque.

As the car turned the corner, her silhouette vanished from the mirror.

*

Quinn watched the black Maybach merge into the rush hour traffic. It turned the corner, its taillights flashing twice in the twilight before disappearing completely.

She turned on her heel and walked straight toward the hospital building.

This wasn't her first time at The Haven Medical Center. Before Garrison bought the building, it had been a failing private clinic. She had toured the property with him.

She knew exactly where the security camera blind spots were. She knew the exact routes the nurses avoided during shift changes.

Slipping through the side door of the emergency channel, she bypassed the main floors and took the fire stairs next to the pharmaceutical storage room. The fire door on the west wing of the third floor was notoriously never locked.

She completely avoided the elevators. She climbed the stairs step by step, the soundproof walls of the emergency exit swallowing the click of her heels.

But she didn't need to. She just needed to trick the machine into thinking she was him.

A beam of blue light shot out from the scanner, weaving an intricate, invisible biometric net waiting for a human eye. Quinn pulled a small silver case from her pocket. Opening it, she carefully extracted two impossibly thin, transparent lenses.

These weren't your average contacts. They were micro-nanoscale bionic iris lenses, forged from medical-grade silicone hydrogel and measuring a mere 0.04 millimeters thick—thinner than a standard contact lens.

The surface of the lenses had been etched with a femtosecond laser, flawlessly replicating every single radial furrow, crypt, and collarette of Garrison's iris.

But how did she get the biometric data?

Every year, Rosemary Hayes insisted the entire family go for full-body checkups at their private family clinic. The ophthalmology department's fundus camera happened to be a top-tier model equipped with high-resolution iris imaging.

Last month, Quinn had quietly accessed Garrison's medical files, pulled the data, and forwarded it to Vanessa. The very next day, Vanessa had handed her these bionic lenses.