Chapter 34 - The Cleansing Protocol
They fell out onto a steep, snow-covered embankment beneath the roaring blackness of the night sky.
Behind them, a muted roar ripped through the concrete hillside. The blast hatch they had just crawled through vomited a towering column of orange flame and black smoke, slamming shut under the force of an internal explosion. The earth trembled violently beneath their boots. The laboratory, the tanks, the research files, and whatever remained of Julian and Evelyn Mercer were being consumed in an inferno hot enough to melt titanium.
David pulled Leah down into the freezing powder behind a cluster of pine trees, sheltering both babies beneath their coats.
Above the tree line, half a mile up the winding mountain road, two matte-black helicopters hovered without running lights. Their spotlights swept the snowy canopy like giant, predatory eyes, carving paths of harsh white radiance through the falling snow.
"They're scanning the perimeter," David whispered, his teeth chattering uncontrollably from the shock and the biting wind. "Thermal imaging. Our body heat will light up like flares on their screens."
Leah was trembling so hard she could barely speak. She had stripped off her outer fleece jacket and wrapped it around both infants, sandwiching the two girls together against her chest to share their body warmth. Remarkably, the moment the two babies touched, their cries ceased. Asset 409 reached out her tiny hand, curling her fingers instinctively into Maya’s thin hospital gown.
Two reflections of the same genetic blueprint, surviving in the snow.
"We have to get to the highway," Leah whispered, tears freezing on her eyelashes. "David, my car... they know what we drive. They know who we are. Where do we go? Who can we call? The police? The FBI? Evelyn said the Consortium owns the state judiciary!"
"No police," David said firmly, his eyes fixed on the distant mountain road. "No phones. No hospitals until we know who holds the strings. Miller... Detective Miller in Ohio. He was the only one who didn't dismiss your mother's case as simple dementia."
"Miller is a thousand miles away!"
"Then we start walking," David said, hauling Leah to her feet. "Because if we stop moving in this snow, we die."
A snap of a dry branch broke the silence twenty yards to their left.
May you like
David spun around, raising the tire iron. Out of the darkness between two hemlock trees, a silhouette emerged from the blowing snow.
***
