Elena pulled back the blanket in a frenzy of panic, her fingers catching on a thin, blue wire sewn into the soft cotton lining of Mateo’s infant carrier. Embedded deep within the fabric sat a flat, translucent disc pulsing with a rhythm that matched the hum echoing from the woman’s remote.
«Don’t touch it!» Dr. Thorne roared, grabbing Elena’s wrist just as a beam of red laser light painted the center of Thorne’s forehead.
A sharp thwip shattered the silence. Dr. Thorne gasped, her eyes widening in shock as a crimson stain bloomed across the neck of her trench coat. She collapsed onto the wet asphalt, the digital reader on her wrist smashing against the pavement and scattering blue sparks into the dark.
«Cover!» Tomas yelled, hurling himself across the narrow gap to tackle Elena and the baby behind the heavy steel frame of a commercial dumpster just as a suppressed volley ripped through the brickwork behind them. Dust and pulverized mortar rained down on their hair.
«Tomas, look at me!» Elena sobbed, shielding Mateo with her body as the baby began to wail, a sound lost beneath the sharp crackle of gunfire bouncing off the metal walls. «You have to believe me! I don’t know what that device is, and I don’t know why she said that about Mateo!»
Tomas stared at her, his face pale, his dark eyes brimming with a terrifying mix of fury, grief, and indecision. His hand hovered over her coat pocket where the active satellite comms device still glowed with its agonizing countdown: 00:02:45.
«If you were meant to kill me,» Tomas rasped, his voice raw as he ducked low under a burst of automatic fire that turned the trash bin into a ringing bell, «why didn’t you do it in Chicago?»
«Because she didn’t know what she was,» the woman in the emerald coat called out, her voice stepping closer, accompanied by the heavy, synchronized footfalls of tactical boots advancing down the alley. «Did you really think we’d trust an operative with her own memory intact, Tomas? Synthetic amnesia is remarkably effective. She truly believes she loves you.»
Elena felt her stomach drop into a dark, bottomless void. Her mind raced back through every memory of her past—her childhood, her family, her college years—and found them suddenly feeling paper-thin, like lines memorized from a script. The terror in her chest seized her throat.
«Stay behind me,» Tomas spat through clenched teeth, pulling his own pistol from his jacket waistband. He reached into Thorne’s pooling blood, snatched the cracked digital wrist-reader from her motionless hand, and shoved it into his pocket. «We move on three for the fire escape.»
«Tomas, wait—» Elena began, but a heavy concussion grenade bounced off the lip of the dumpster, rolling directly between their feet.
«Move!» Tomas shoved Elena toward the iron ladder just as a blinding flash and a deafening roar tore through the alley, knocking them both to the wet pavement.
Ears ringing, vision swimming in bright streaks of white, Elena forced herself up onto her knees. The world was dead silent save for a high-pitched whine in her ears. Through the thick chemical smoke, she saw two tactical operators marching toward her, their rifles raised.
Tomas was sprawled three feet away, motionless, a line of dark blood running down from his temple.
Elena reached out frantically for Mateo, but the woman in the emerald coat stepped into view, bringing her polished Italian leather shoe down onto Elena’s outstretched wrist with agonizing force. Elena screamed into the smoke, tears blinding her as the woman casually reached down and lifted the crying baby straight out of Elena’s limp arms.
«A perfect biological duplicate,» the woman murmured, inspecting the small face under the glare of the tactical spotlights. «Twenty years of research, right on schedule.»
«Give… him… back,» Elena wheezed, pushing herself off the ground despite the agony in her arm, her instincts overriding every shred of paralyzing doubt about her own past.
The woman didn’t even look at her. «Eliminate the handler,» she ordered flatly, turning her back to walk toward the lead van. «And take Vasconcelos. The board wants his brain intact for extraction.»
One of the soldiers stepped forward, pressing the cold, thick barrel of a suppressed assault rifle directly against Elena’s forehead. She closed her eyes, clutching the wet gravel of the alley, waiting for the impact.
A sudden, sharp metallic click echoed from the shadows directly behind the soldier.
«I wouldn’t pull that trigger if I were you, Director,» a cold, smooth voice drifted out from the black darkness of the adjacent alleyway—a voice that made the woman in the emerald coat freeze in her tracks.
«I wouldn’t pull that trigger if I were you, Director,» a cold, smooth voice drifted out from the black darkness of the adjacent alleyway—a voice that made the woman in the emerald coat freeze in her tracks.
Out from the gloom stepped a man impeccably dressed in a charcoal three-piece suit, stepping around the debris with effortless grace. In his hand, he held a sleek, silver remote control identical to the one held by the woman.
«Victoria,» the man smiled, his gray eyes gleaming with dangerous intelligence under the alley lamps. «You always were too impatient. Did you really think I wouldn’t place a secondary failsafe inside the clone’s subcutaneous tracker?»
The woman in the emerald coat turned slowly, her composure instantly shattering into raw venom. «You… you were supposed to be dead in Zurich.»
«Reports of my death are always vastly exaggerated,» the man chuckled, pressing a code into his remote.
Instantly, the blue light on the baby’s carrier flared bright red. A high-pitched, agonizing frequency blasted from the disc, making every soldier in the alley drop their weapons and clutch their helmets in sheer agony, groaning as their heads throbbed with unbearable pressure.
Tomas stirred on the ground, groaning as he reached for his fallen pistol.
«Elena! Take the child now!» the man in the suit shouted, his voice cutting through the noise.
Elena scrambled forward on her hands and knees, grabbing Mateo out of the woman’s temporarily paralyzed grip. She pulled the baby tight against her chest and stumbled toward Tomas, hooking her arm under his shoulder to haul him to his feet.
«Who are you?» Tomas gasped, disoriented, aiming his shaking gun at the stranger in the suit.
The man stepped forward, offering a soft, chilling smile as he gestured toward the alley exit where an unmarked silver sedan sat idling.
«I’m the man who paid Elena to betray you six years ago, Tomas,» the man said smoothly. «And I am also your real father.»