Chapter 27 - The Bargain of Blood
The taste of copper filled David’s mouth as his cheek was pinned roughly against the floorboards. A heavy tactical knee pressed deep into the small of his back, compressing his lungs until every breath felt like inhaling crushed glass.
Footsteps approached. The measured, rhythmic *clack-tap* of an ebony cane with an ivory tip.
Julian Vance stepped into the kitchen light. He was wearing an impeccably tailored charcoal overcoat over a dark cashmere turtleneck. His face was weathered, handsome in an austere, aristocratic way, with high cheekbones and eyes that possessed the dead, predatory brilliance of a hawk.
He looked down at David with a mixture of clinical curiosity and faint disappointment.
"You broke three ribs on my security specialist," Julian observed, gesturing with his cane toward the man on the floor who was groaning, clutching his bruised chest. "Inefficient. Costly. But predictable."
"Where... is she?" David managed to gasp, his voice muffled against the pine.
"I told you. Boston. Under excellent medical supervision," Julian said softly. He tapped the cane once against the floor. "Release him, Miller."
The heavy weight vanished from David's spine. David coughed violently, rolling over and propping his back against the base of the island. Plaster dust coated his hair; blood dripped steadily from a cut along his cheekbone.
At the top of the stairs, the creak of wood announced Leah’s presence.
She walked down slowly, her head held high, though her eyes were raw and rimmed with red. In her arms, wrapped securely in a thick fleece blanket, was the sleeping baby.
Maya—or Asset 409—was blissfully unaware of the shattered glass, the smell of cordite, and the men holding firearms in her living room. Her tiny thumb was lodged securely in her mouth, her dark curls resting against Leah's collarbone.
"Leah," Julian said, his voice softening into something almost paternal. "Look at you. Still playing the domestic martyr. You could have run the European clinical operations. Instead, you chose to play house in the woods with Evelyn's experiment."
"Take her," Leah said, her voice completely dead. She didn't look at David. She refused to meet his eyes. "Take the girl and give me the access codes to Maya's telemetry. The trade was simple, Julian. Asset 409 for Maya's freedom."
David pushed himself up from the floor, his vision swimming with rage. "No! Leah, don't you dare hand that baby over!"
"She isn't ours, David!" Leah shrieked, the tears finally bursting free in a torrential flood. "She was never ours! Maya is out there alone in a sterile room, hooked up to a machine! I want my daughter back!"
"Asset 409 is not going to an orphanage, David," Julian remarked calmly, signaling one of his operators to step forward with a padded transport bassinet. "She carries an engineered neural baseline that resists neurodegenerative decay. Her bone marrow contains the synthetic stem cell culture that your mother spent thirty years attempting to replicate. She is worth seventy million dollars to our backers in Zurich."
"You're a monster," David whispered.
"I am an architect of human evolution," Julian corrected, taking a sleek silver keycard from his coat pocket and tossing it onto the kitchen counter in front of Leah. "The terminal coordinates and bypass codes for Maya's suite are encoded on the chip. You have precisely four hours before the facility's security shifts from private custody to federal quarantine. If you aren't there to claim your daughter by 06:00 AM, the local authorities will assume jurisdiction—and her telemetry will experience a fatal system desynchronization."
The operative reached for the bundle in Leah's arms.
Leah closed her eyes, her lips trembling as she pressed one final, agonized kiss to the baby's forehead. Her arms loosened.
The man took the child.
"No!" David lunged, but the butt of a rifle caught him across the temple.
May you like
The world flared white, then folded into complete and suffocating blackness.
***
