Sparks rained into the cabin as the circular saw bit through the armored ceiling, filling the air with the sharp, acrid stench of burning metal and ozone. Leo shrieked, his tiny legs kicking wildly against Victoria’s ribs as she rolled toward the far corner of the floorboards, covering his head with her arms.

«Keep down!» Julian screamed, slamming his foot onto the accelerator.

The transport bucked hard as he swerved violently from side to side, trying to throw the weight off the roof. Outside, the engine shrieked in protest, the speedometer needle burying itself past a hundred miles per hour as they hurled down the sheer cliffside road. Above them, the heavy blade ground through the last inches of steel with a deafening screech. The hatch section was torn upward, cold mountain wind howling into the cabin, and a gloved hand reached down into the dark, feeling blindly for the door latch.

Victoria didn’t hesitate. She lunged forward with the tactical knife, driving the blade straight through the leather glove.

A muffled roar of pain sounded from the roof, and the hand jerked backward into the wind. But before Victoria could scramble back to Leo, the transport shuddered as one of the pursuing black sedans rammed their rear bumper, sending a violent shockwave through the frame.

«Julian!» Victoria yelled, holding Leo against her shoulder as she dragged herself back toward the front seats. «The roof—»

«I see him!» Julian barked, his face pale beneath the bloody bandages as he checked the overhead mirror. «Grab the black case under the bench! Now!»

Victoria scrambled across the rattling floorboards, her fingers wrapping around the latches of a heavy pelican case tucked beside the spare tire. She flipped the catches open. Inside lay a compact, high-frequency signal jammer and a small, glass vial filled with a glowing amber liquid—labeled with her own handwriting, dated eight years ago.

Her hand froze over the glass. «I made this…» she whispered, the memory suddenly surfacing like a submerged corpse. «This wasn’t my father’s chemical compound. It was mine.»

«You built the baseline before they wiped your memories in Geneva!» Julian yelled, taking another sharp turn that sent tires squealing against the edge of the guardrail. «Your father didn’t betray you, Victoria—you betrayed him to protect the blueprints!»

175 words.

The ceiling metal ripped completely open.

A tactical operative wearing a black visor dropped through the jagged gap, landing heavily on the floorboards just feet from Victoria. Before the man could raise his weapon, Julian hit the emergency brake.

The massive transport pitched forward violently. The operative lost his footing, skidding headfirst toward the open rear doors, but his tactical line snapped taut, arresting his fall. He swung back into the cabin like a pendulum, his boot catching Victoria squarely in the chest.

Victoria slammed back against the wall, the breath exploding from her lungs in a harsh gasp. Leo slipped from her arms, sliding across the metal floor toward the open rear threshold where the asphalt blurred past at eighty miles an hour.

«Leo!» Victoria shrieked, throwing her body across the cabin floor, her fingers missing the baby’s blanket by inches.

The operative reached down, grabbing the infant by his swaddling clothes just as Leo dangled over the roaring pavement. The man raised his visor, revealing cold, gray eyes and a deep scar running from his ear to his jawline.

«The girl said you’d be weak, Victoria,» the man grunted over the roar of the wind. «She was right.»

«Give him to me!» Victoria choked out, pushing herself onto her knees, the tactical knife trembling in her grasp.

«He’s not your son,» the operative said, his thumb hovering over a detonator strapped to his chest rig. «He’s the fail-safe. If Arthur Vance doesn’t yield the Geneva vault by midnight, this child’s genetic sequence is programmed to terminate.»

360 words.

Victoria’s mind went entirely blank. Terminated. The word echoed in her skull with sickening clarity. She looked at the man’s thumb resting on the switch, then down at the glowing amber vial resting in the open case beside her knees.

Without a second thought, she smashed the glass vial against the steel floorboards.

A dense, sweet-smelling mist instantly erupted into the air, filling the sealed compartment with a pale golden fog. The operative gasped, trying to pull his mask down, but the vapor touched his exposed neck. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, his hands seizing up as his grip on Leo loosened instantly.

Victoria lunged forward, catching Leo in midair as the operative collapsed backward, tumbling out the open rear doors and bouncing onto the asphalt behind them.

She pulled the screaming baby tight against her neck, collapsing against the front seat bulkhead, coughing violently as the gas spread through the cabin.

«Cover your mouth!» Julian shouted, pulling a rebreather mask over his own nose and throwing a second one back to her. «That vapor neutralizes the synthetic neural markers in the clones! It won’t hurt you, but—»

Julian stopped mid-sentence.

The transport’s engine suddenly died with a low, agonizing groan. The dashboard screens flickered black, every digital instrument shutting off simultaneously as an intense electromagnetic pulse rippled through the valley.

550 words.

The heavy vehicle lost power, coasting blindly through the dark curves as the power steering locked up. Julian wrestled with the wheel, muscle straining against metal as he forced the transport off the road, crashing through a wooden guardrail and sliding down an embankment into a dense patch of pinewoods.

The transport ground to a halt against a thick pine trunk, the chassis groaning under the impact.

Silence settled over the wrecked vehicle, broken only by the hiss of steam from the shattered radiator and the frantic sound of Victoria’s breathing.

Julian unbuckled his harness, his left arm hanging uselessly as he turned around in his seat to look at her. His eyes were wide with a terror Victoria had never seen in him before.

«We have five minutes,» Julian whispered, reaching into his coat and pulling out a small, heavy brass key attached to a leather lanyard. He held it out to her with a trembling hand. «They used the localized EMP. Charlotte is already here.»

«Who is Charlotte?» Victoria demanded, her voice cracking as she fitted the rebreather over Leo’s face. «You said she was my sister, then you said none of us are real—»

«Charlotte was the first duplicate,» Julian said, his voice barely audible above the dripping oil. «She thinks she’s the original. Just like you think you’re the original.»

He reached out, brushing a strand of hair from Victoria’s face, his thumb lingering near her ear. He gently pressed a tiny spot behind her earlobe.

A faint, mechanical click sounded under her skin.

725 words.

Victoria froze, her blood turning to ice as a cold, metallic sensation throbbed beneath her jawline.

«What did you just do?» she whispered, her hands shaking so violently she could barely hold the baby.

Julian didn’t answer. He looked past her, toward the shattered rear doors of the transport.

Through the clearing fog of the crash site, a figure stepped slowly out of the shadows of the pine trees.

She was wearing a pristine white wool coat, entirely untouched by the mud or rain. In her left hand, she held a silence-equipped pistol pointed at the transport. In her right hand, she held a small black remote control with a single blinking red LED.

Victoria stared through the rear doors, her breath catching in her throat.

The woman in the white coat had Victoria’s face, Victoria’s eyes, and Victoria’s exact voice. But beside her stepped a second woman—identical in every feature, wearing the exact same white coat. And behind them, stepping out from between the dark trunks of the trees, were three more.

Five identical women stood in a semicircle around the wrecked transport, all holding firearms, all staring at Victoria with cold, unblinking eyes.

The woman in the center raised her pistol and aimed it directly at Julian’s head.

«Thank you for bringing her home, Julian,» the woman in the center said softly. «Now trigger the sequence in her neck, or I kill the child first.»