The woman’s face was an impossible mirror, etched only by thirty additional years of quiet, ruthless survival. Rain rattled against the canvas canopy above them, but inside the barge’s sheltered deck, the air was dead and heavy with the scent of sea salt and engine oil.
Elena couldn’t speak. Her voice was trapped behind a wall of sheer, suffocating disbelief. The woman stepping out of the shadows wasn’t just a stranger with matching eyes. She bore the exact bone structure, the identical faint, crescent-shaped scar above her left eyebrow that Elena had carried since childhood.
«You’re… dead,» Elena choked out, pushing herself backward across the rough wooden planks, clutching Leo so tightly against her chest that the infant gave a sharp, breathless cry. «My mother died in a clinic in Geneva. I saw the records.»
«You saw the records Julian wanted you to see,» the woman replied smoothly, her voice a calm, hypnotic contrast to the burning inferno twisting above them on the bridge. «Geneva was where they took my first iteration, Elena. You were my second.»
The words struck like a physical blow. Elena’s back slammed against a stack of rusted shipping containers, trapping her. «Iteration?»
«I am Victoria,» the woman said, stepping closer. She reached out a slim, leather-gloved hand toward Leo, but Elena recoiled, raising the brass key Mateo had given her like a primitive weapon. Victoria merely smiled—a thin, cold line. «Did you truly believe Julian was clever enough to design human genetic anchors on his own? He borrowed my research. Then he stole my children. All six of you.»
A sickening pulse of vertigo washed over Elena. All six of you.
Mateo hadn’t said Julian engineered six children for himself. He had said Leo was the sixth. The anchor.
«I am not your experiment,» Elena spat, her hands trembling as she tried to unwrap Leo’s blanket to check the vial of stabilizer. «I grew up in Lisbon. I had a father. I had a life!»
«You had a baseline monitor,» Victoria corrected softly. She tilted her head toward the burning superstructure of the suspension bridge above them. High above, twisted steel cables groaned under immense tension before snapping one by one, whipping into the river like iron striking water. «Your ‘father’ was paid two hundred thousand euros a year to keep you within a three-mile radius of the Lisbon underground vault. Why do you think your blood type never matched anyone in your medical files?»
Before Elena could process the question, a heavy thump echoed from the stern of the barge, followed by the wet, metallic slap of boots on deck.
Victoria didn’t even turn around. «You’re late, Samantha.»
Elena snapped her gaze past Victoria’s shoulder. Samantha strode into the amber glow of the barge’s hanging lanterns, drenched in river water and soot. Her tactical harness was torn, a deep crimson trail leaking from a wound on her side, but her weapon was raised—and it was pointed straight at Victoria’s spine.
«The bridge span didn’t fall cleanly,» Samantha panted, her chest heaving as she wiped blood from her jaw. «Julian survived the blast. He’s on the support boat trailing us.»
«Let him trail,» Victoria said smoothly, not taking her eyes off Elena. «He has no authority here. The board voted twenty minutes ago. His assets are frozen.»
«He doesn’t care about the board!» Samantha shouted, her finger tightening on the trigger. «He activated the secondary protocol! The other five children… he released them into the city!»
Victoria froze. For the first time, the icy, unshakeable composure on her face shattered, replaced by a sudden, sharp tremor of genuine fear. «He wouldn’t. The city’s grid isn’t isolated. If their genetic signatures overlap without the anchor in place—»
«They will all suffer fatal neurological collapse,» Samantha finished grimly. «Starting with the eldest. Starting with you, Elena.»
Elena felt a strange, cold prickle at the base of her skull. It started as a faint buzz—a high-frequency pitch that vibrated right behind her ears, identical to the static she used to hear before her worst migraines. But this wasn’t a migraine.
In her arms, Leo suddenly stopped crying. His small eyes opened wide, his pupils dilating until they swallowed the irises entirely, turning his eyes into terrifying, pitch-black pools.
«Elena, look at him!» Samantha yelled, taking a step forward. «He’s syncing! Julian initialized the frequency from the shore!»
«Elena, look at him!» Samantha yelled, taking a step forward. «He’s syncing! Julian initialized the frequency from the shore!»
Elena looked down at her son in absolute terror. Leo’s tiny skin was growing burning hot to the touch, tiny blue veins bulging clearly along his neck and forehead. The clear vial hidden inside his blanket began to glow with a faint, iridescent bioluminescence, reacting directly to his body heat.
«Give him to me!» Victoria demanded, dropping her umbrella and stepping forward with sudden, explosive speed. «I have the isolation chamber in the hold! It’s the only place that can block Julian’s signal!»
«She’s lying!» Samantha snapped, lowering her pistol from Victoria and training it directly on Elena’s heart. «The hold isn’t an isolation chamber, Elena! It’s an extraction suite! She doesn’t want to save him—she needs to drain his spinal fluid to reset her own genetic decay!»
«Choose, Elena,» Victoria whispered, her blue eyes gleaming under the lantern light, extending both hands. «Your son dies in three minutes from a synthetic stroke, or he lives in my lab. You have three seconds before Julian’s boat rams our stern.»
A deafening horn blasted through the fog as a dark, razor-hulled speedboat sliced through the wake behind the barge, aiming directly for their hull.
Elena looked from Victoria’s cold, outstretched hands to Samantha’s loaded gun, then down at her baby, whose tiny heart was hammering against her palm at an impossible, lethal speed. She pressed her thumb against the brass key Mateo had given her—and noticed, for the very first time, a small digital screen embedded in the key’s base, pulsing with a single row of numbers:
00:14… 00:13… 00:12…
It wasn’t a key to a door. It was a remote detonator.
Elena gripped the key tightly, looked up into the eyes of the woman who shared her face, and smiled through her tears. «I choose neither of you.»
She slammed the key down onto the metal rivet beside her.