Chapter 36 - The Safehouse on Route 9
Julian couldn't walk another hundred yards.
"Leave me," he gasped, slumping against the trunk of a fallen cedar. "I’ll draw their perimeter sweeps toward the creek bed. Take the access trail behind the abandoned salt shed... there’s an old forester’s truck parked by the logging gate. Keys are under the wheel well."
David looked into his brother's eyes. The arrogance, the clinical detachment, the cold ambition that had defined Julian Mercer for thirty years was entirely gone, replaced by the hollow gaze of a condemned man.
"Julian—"
"Go, David!" Julian snarled, his voice cracking with sudden ferocity. "Before they find the tracks! Save Maya! Both of them!"
David didn't look back. He grabbed Leah’s hand, and they plunged into the thick pine thicket, following the faint logging path downhill while the diesel engines ground their gears in the valley. Behind them, five minutes later, a sharp volley of automatic gunfire echoed through the trees, followed by absolute silence.
Julian had bought them their head start.
The forester's pickup was an ancient, rusted Ford F-250, buried under four inches of fresh powder. David dug his fingers into the icy wheel well, found the magnetic key box, and threw Leah and the infants into the bench seat. The engine sputtered, wheezed, and finally roared to life with an exhaust leak that rattled the cab.
David drove without headlights for the first two miles, navigating the serpentine logging trail purely by the faint moonlight reflecting off the snow.
By dawn, they were fifty miles south, tucked behind an abandoned roadside diner off Route 9.
The cab was warm now from the rattling heater. Leah sat hunched on the passenger side, her shirt unbuttoned, desperately attempting to nurse both infants. Asset 409 latched eagerly, her appetite ferocious and healthy. But Maya—the biological Maya—could barely suckle. She was pale, her skin cool and clammy, her breathing shallow.
"She’s burning up, David," Leah sobbed, pressing the back of her trembling hand to Maya’s forehead. "She has a fever. The damp air... the exposure. She’s too fragile. We have to take her to an emergency room!"
"We can't," David said, staring at the rearview mirror with bloodshot eyes. "The moment we register her name or our names, the system flags the database. The Consortium will have a sweep team there in twenty minutes."
"Then she’s going to die in my arms!" Leah screamed, the terror cracking through her exhausted facade. "Look at her, David! Look at our daughter!"
David looked. The contrast was terrifying. Asset 409 was robust, genetically optimized, thriving despite the trauma. But the true Maya, starved of proper medical care for over a year, was slipping away.
May you like
David jammed the blood-stained flash drive into his pocket. "There’s one person who has the equipment and isn't on their payroll. But to reach him, we have to cross state lines."
***
