The heavy silence following his words hung in the air like a blade, sharp and suffocating. Tomas’s jaw tightened, his knuckle turning white against the trigger of his gun. His chest heaved, blood dripping down his cheek to stain his collar as he stared at the stranger in the charcoal suit.
«You’re lying,» Tomas spat, though his trembling hands betrayed the sudden, staggering blow to his core.
«Check your pocket, my boy,» the man replied smoothly, not flinching at the sight of the barrel pointed directly at his heart. «The wrist-reader you stole from Dr. Thorne. Activate the second encrypted partition.»
Elena backed away, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs as Mateo’s cries softened into frightened whimpers. She looked from the man’s razor-sharp jawline to Tomas’s face. The uncanny similarity was undeniable—the same piercing gray eyes, the same subtle crook in the bridge of the nose. Her mind spun, fracturing under the terrible weight of her own forgotten past. Was I really a traitor? Was my entire life a lie?
Behind them, Director Victoria groaned on the asphalt, fighting through the debilitating neurological pulse, her hand creeping agonizingly toward the radio on her tactical vest.
«We have less than forty seconds before her heavy armor unit arrives,» the man said, stepping toward the idling silver sedan and opening the rear door. «If you want to survive the night and learn why Elena was ordered to take your memories, get in.»
«Don’t listen to him, Tomas!» Elena cried, clutching the baby closer. «I don’t know who I am, but I know I would never hurt you or Mateo! We can’t trust him!»
«You don’t have a choice, Elena,» the man said, turning his cold gaze upon her. «Because Mateo isn’t a clone of Tomas. He’s a clone of you.»
Elena froze, the breath snatched straight from her lungs. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. She stared down at the tiny baby in her arms, her head throbbing with a sudden, blinding migraine as fragments of an unknown operating room flashed behind her eyes—bright surgical lights, cold stainless steel, and her own voice screaming a name that wasn’t Mateo.
«What did you just say?» Tomas demanded, his gun lowering an inch in sheer bewilderment.
Before the man could answer, a high-caliber sniper round tore through the roof of the dumpster with a deafening metallic boom, showering them in sparks.
«In! Now!» the man barked, his calm demeanor snapping into immediate authority.
Tomas grabbed Elena’s elbow, shoving her into the leather interior of the sedan before throwing himself in beside her and slamming the door. The man jumped into the driver’s seat, floored the accelerator, and the heavy sedan roared forward, sweeping out of the alley just as a hail of armor-piercing bullets shattered the brick wall where they had been standing a second before.
Tires screeched as the car swerved sharply onto the rain-slicked boulevard. Elena pulled the seatbelt over herself and the baby, her eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror. Two black SUVs peeled out from the shadows three blocks behind them, their high beams blinding.
«My name is Julian Vance,» the man said, navigating the sedan through the midnight traffic with lethal precision. «And six years ago, Tomas, your mother didn’t die of cancer. Victoria murdered her to gain control of the Genesis Protocol.»
Tomas leaned forward from the backseat, his voice dropping into a dangerous, terrifying register. «My mother died in my arms in Boston. I buried her.»
«You buried a bio-synthetic decoy,» Julian said flatly, eyes locked on the road. «Just like the child Elena is holding right now is designed to replace her once her primary memory core completely destabilizes.»
Elena’s hand flew to her collarbone, where a tiny, raised scar sat just beneath her skin—a scar she had always believed was from a childhood bout of chickenpox. She pressed her fingers against it, and to her horror, felt a hard, mechanical micro-nodule shifting beneath her tissue.
«Tomas…» Elena whispered, panic rising in her chest as the scar began to glow with a faint, nauseating yellow light. «Tomas, something is wrong inside me.»
Tomas reached out, his face pale as he touched her neck. «Julian, pull over! What is happening to her?»
«The fail-safe,» Julian growled, glancing at the dashboard display as the sedan’s digital telemetry began to glitch violently. «Victoria activated the purge sequence before we broke line of sight. Elena’s synthetic memories are degrading. In five minutes, her brain will wipe itself entirely to protect the network’s data.»
«Fix it!» Tomas roared, pressing his pistol against the back of Julian’s headrest. «Fix it now or I swear to God I’ll end you right here!»
«The only way to stop the purge is the decryption key inside Thorne’s reader!» Julian yelled over the whining engine as an SUV rammed their rear bumper, sending the sedan fishtailing across three lanes of wet asphalt. «Give it to me!»
Tomas yanked the blood-stained device from his pocket, but as he moved to hand it forward, the cracked screen lit up on its own. A video file began to play automatically, displaying a high-definition recording dated exactly three hours ago.
On the tiny screen, Dr. Thorne sat in a dimly lit room, her face bruised. But it wasn’t Julian or Victoria standing over her.
It was Tomas.
On the recording, Tomas leaned down, his eyes devoid of any emotion, and whispered into Thorne’s ear: «Make sure Elena remembers the lie. If she discovers the baby is the key to the vault, kill her.»
Elena stared at the screen, every drop of blood draining from her face. She looked up at Tomas, stepping back against the car door in sheer horror, holding Mateo away from him as if he were a stranger.
«Tomas…» she breathed, her voice trembling uncontrollably. «That was… that was tonight. Before you came to the safehouse.»
Tomas stared at the video, his eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated shock. «Elena, no… I never met with Thorne tonight! I was at the docks waiting for you! I don’t—I don’t know what that is!»
«You’re lying to her again, aren’t you, son?» Julian said softly, a dark, sinister smile spreading across his face as he locked the rear doors with a sharp electronic click. «Tell her the truth, Tomas. Tell her who really commands the board.»