Chapter 15 - The Ambush at the Cradle
A slow, deliberate clapping sound shattered the silence behind them.
Nathan and Kane whipped around, weapons raised.
Stepping out from the shadows of a pressurized airlock was not Vanessa, but Dr. Alistair Sterling—the Vance family's personal physician for over fifteen years, the very man who had confirmed Vanessa’s ultrasound scans and signed Julian's death certificate.
"I must admit, Nathan," Sterling smiled, his hands buried casually in the pockets of his lab coat. "I expected you to run to Europe with the boy. You always were predictably stubborn, just like your brother."
"You," Nathan snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger. "You signed off on her fake sonograms. You faked the heartbeat recordings. You murdered Julian."
"Julian was weak," Sterling said smoothly, not flinching in the face of two assault rifles. "He had the vision to fund Project Cerulean, but when he realized that true biological evolution requires the consumption of human hosts, he grew squeamish. He wanted to pull the plug. Vanessa was much more... pragmatic."
"Where is she, Sterling?!" Kane barked. "Drop to your knees with your hands behind your head, or I will put a round through your skull!"
Sterling merely chuckled, a low, rasping sound. "Agent Kane, you should really check your secure phone. The one linked to your 'untraceable' safehouse in Cheyenne."
Kane’s face twisted in panic. He pulled the tactical receiver from his vest. The screen was flashing red: *SIGNAL LOST – BIOMETRIC MONITORS FLATLINED.*
"Leo..." Nathan felt the ground fall out from beneath him.
"She was never hiding in Massachusetts, Nathan," Sterling said, his eyes glittering with malice. "She let you find this place. She needed you two thousand miles away from the boy. The blue compound isn't just an experimental formula. It’s an epigenetic anchor. And it needs a living genetic match to complete the synthesis. Leo is Julian’s flesh and blood. He is the missing half of the equation."
Before Nathan could fire, the airlock doors behind Sterling slammed shut with the force of a bomb. Simultaneously, high-pressure gas jets in the ceiling hissed open, spewing dense, sweet-smelling neurotoxin into the hallway.
Kane lunged for the door, firing a burst from his rifle, but the bulletproof glass merely spiderwebbed. "Nathan! Gas! Get to the ventilation shaft!"
Nathan coughed, his vision immediately blurring into streaks of vivid blue and black. His knees buckled under the weight of the paralytic agent. As his consciousness slipped into the dark, the last thing he saw through the misted glass was Sterling holding up a satellite phone showing a live feed:
May you like
Leo, tied to a stainless-steel hospital bed inside a moving vehicle, and standing over him, stroking his hair with razor-sharp acrylic nails, was Vanessa.
***
