The crimson numbers pulsed steadily through Leo’s skin, throwing a faint, bloody glow across the cold stone floor of the maintenance hut. Victoria’s breath hitched, her lungs seizing as the digital clock under the infant’s wrist ticked down past fifty-nine minutes and fifty-two seconds. Her fingers trembled so violently she nearly dropped the child.
On the dirt floor, the cracked phone screen flickered again. Arthur Vance leaned into the camera frame, his smooth, unwrinkled face twisting into a terrifyingly familiar smile.
«One hour, Victoria,» Arthur’s voice rasped from the tiny speaker. «That is all the time the synthetic marrow gives him before the genetic lock ruptures his cardiovascular system. You have fifty-nine minutes to bring him to the lower research level beneath the Geneva vault.»
«He’s a baby!» Victoria screamed at the glowing glass, her voice shattering in the tiny stone room. «He’s your own blood!»
«He is a container,» Arthur corrected flatly. «And so are you. If you want the stabilizing serum, come home. Alone. If Charlotte finds you first, she will tear that child apart just to read the raw sequence in his marrow.»
The screen snapped to black.
Overhead, the heavy crunch of boots on gravel exploded through the quiet night. Flashlights swept across the cracked window frame of the maintenance hut, cutting through the darkness in sharp, overlapping beams. They were back.
180 words.
Victoria thrust the phone into her coat pocket, wrapped Leo tightly against her chest, and pressed her spine flat against the icy stone wall. Through a gap in the masonry, she saw two of the identical Charlottes stepping past the doorway, silenced pistols raised, their motions perfectly synchronized like reflections in a mirror.
«She didn’t take the road,» one Charlotte said, her voice completely devoid of inflection.
«Her vitals dropped off the network,» the second replied instantly, using the exact same pitch and tone. «The child’s secondary ping just initialized. Grid square four. She’s within fifty yards.»
Victoria clutched Leo tighter, shielding his wrist against her jacket so the crimson glow wouldn’t give away their position in the dark. The countdown burned into her skin through the fabric: 00:54:12… 00:54:11…
She looked around the tiny maintenance hut. There was no back door. No trapdoor. Just four crumbling walls and a rusted steel drainage pipe protruding from the floor, barely eighteen inches wide.
340 words.
The footsteps stopped directly outside the wooden door of the hut.
Victoria didn’t hesitate. Squeezing her shoulders together, she slid feet-first into the dark, slick opening of the drainage pipe, pulling Leo against her collarbone just as the wooden door was kicked off its hinges with a deafening crash.
She plummeted down the smooth metal shaft, cold grease and stagnant water smearing across her clothes as gravity dragged her into the subterranean dark.
Above her, gunfire shredded the empty hut.
She slammed down onto a concrete floor forty feet below, sliding across a slick floor into a sprawling, pitch-black utility tunnel. Overhead, the sound of metal scraping signaled that the Charlottes were already descending the pipe behind her.
Victoria scrambled to her feet, her boots sloshing through ankle-deep water. She sprinted down the concrete corridor, following the faint yellow glow of emergency exit signs running along the ceiling.
495 words.
495 words.
Her chest heaved, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird as she rounded a sharp corner. Up ahead stood a massive pneumatic blast door, sealed tight with an illuminated digital keypad.
Beside the keypad was a heavy biometric glass scanner.
Victoria skidded to a halt in front of the lock. She slapped her palm against the glass plate. Red light swept over her skin.
ACCESS DENIED — SUBJECT 06 INACTIVE.
«No, no, no!» she sobbed, pounding her fist against the reinforced steel.
Behind her, the wet sloshing of footsteps echoed down the tunnel, fast and rhythmic. They were closing in.
Desperate, she glanced down at Leo. The countdown on his tiny wrist was down to 00:38:04. Raising his small, fragile hand, she pressed his infant palm against the biometric glass.
The scanner flashed a blinding violet light.
PRIMARY ARCHITECT VERIFIED. OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.
645 words.
The heavy steel blast door hissed open, sliding into the concrete wall to reveal a vast, pristine white laboratory spanning as far as the eye could see—the Geneva vault.
Victoria threw herself through the opening just as a suppressed bullet struck the metal frame inches from her ear. She slammed her hand against the interior emergency release, and the blast door crashed shut with a deafening thud, sealing her inside.
Breathing heavily, she turned around to face the blinding light of the sterile facility.
The lab wasn’t empty.
Row upon row of tall, cylindrical glass incubation tanks stretched across the cavernous room, filled with bubbling amber fluid. Inside every single tank floated a fully grown adult human body.
Victoria staggered forward, her throat tightening as she looked into the nearest cylinder.
Floating inside the glass, suspended in the liquid with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, was Julian.
Her eyes darted to the next tank. Inside was another Julian. And another. Dozens of them, perfectly preserved, waiting in silent rows.
Her jaw dropped as her hand crept back up to the raised nodule behind her ear.
Before she could process the sight, a soft chime echoed through the ceiling speakers. The large main monitor at the far end of the room flickered to life, displaying a single line of glowing text alongside Leo’s ticking countdown:
SUBJECT 06 MEMORY RECOVERY INITIATED. WELCOME BACK, DIRECTOR VANCE.