Chapter 21 - THE ENCRYPTED DISK
That evening, after putting Lily to bed in Marcus’s guest room, Ethan sat alone in the quiet home office.
He plugged the steel thumb drive into his laptop, staring at the flashing prompt requesting an eight-digit encryption key.
He tried his father's birth date, his mother's name, and his own military service number, but each attempt failed.
He looked across the desk at the framed photograph of his father wearing his Vietnam War service uniform.
He noticed a small series of numbers subtly embroidered into the corner of the US flag patch on his father's jacket.
Ethan typed the six-digit code—197504—into the glowing password box on his laptop screen.
The screen flashed green, and the encrypted drive opened instantly, revealing dozens of scanned intelligence documents.
The top document was a top-secret memorandum from the Defense Intelligence Agency dated April 12, 1998.
The title read: OPERATION BLACK SKY: ASSET PROTECTION AND GENETIC TRACKING PROTOCOL.
Ethan scrolled down to the third page, his eyes locking onto a sentence that made his breath catch in his throat.
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"Subject Ethan Vance has been selected for long-term tactical surveillance due to secondary bloodline inheritance."
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