Chapter 48 - The Awakening in Pod Three
Two days later.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, backed by the Department of Justice, had cordoned off the entire grounds of the Vance estate and the Mount Auburn mausoleum. The raid had been national news. Headlines across every major paper screamed: *PHARMACEUTICAL TITAN ELEANOR VANCE ARRESTED IN ILLEGAL SUBTERRANEAN CLONING FACILITY.*
Eleanor Vance sat in a secure federal medical detention cell at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, paralyzed from the waist down by the neurotoxin, her vocal cords permanently damaged, unable to speak a single word to her high-powered defense attorneys.
Deep beneath the cemetery, federal forensic teams in hazardous-material suits were still cataloging the contents of the secret laboratory.
Special Agent David Vance—Marcus’s estranged older brother, who had vanished twelve years ago after resigning from the Defense Intelligence Agency—walked down the steel staircase into the ruins of the lab.
The yellow caution tape fluttered in the draft of portable ventilation units.
David stopped in front of the center platform. Pod 04 was broken, its glass shattered, its coolant drained. Pods 01 and 02 were open, empty, abandoned during the initial setup years ago.
David walked slowly toward Pod 03.
The glass of Pod 03 was covered in a heavy layer of frost, but the interior vital signs monitor was still softly pinging with a slow, powerful 45-beats-per-minute heart rate.
David pulled a microfiber cloth from his tactical vest and wiped away the frost from the observation viewport.
Inside the pod was not another child.
Inside the pod was a fully grown adult man, preserved in the prime of his life, his hands folded across a crisp military uniform bearing four general’s stars and the name *VANCE* embroidered in gold thread.
It was Marcus and David’s father—General Arthur Vance—who had supposedly died in a plane crash over the Atlantic twenty-five years ago.
David’s hand trembled as he touched the cold glass.
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Suddenly, a red light flashed on the pod’s control panel. A mechanical sequence clicked within the pod’s pneumatic spine.
Inside the chamber, General Arthur Vance’s eyes snapped wide open.
