He Opened the Nursery Door and Found His Mother Attacking His Wife—Then Her Shocking Accusation Revealed a Secret That Could Destroy Their Entire Family. / Chapter 55 / 80

Chapter 55 - The Whisper in the Collar

David’s blood turned to liquid fire.

He stripped the contractor of his tactical radio, his sidearm, two fresh magazines, and his insulated wool patrol coat before dragging the unconscious body deeper into the ravine. He sprinted back to the boulder and pulled Asset 409 into his arms.

The child was seizing. His tiny limbs were stiffening, his eyes rolling back as the wristband flashed purple.

"No, no, no, you don't!" David grunted, wrapping the contractor's heavy coat around the child and sprinting uphill toward the salt shed where Leah had taken cover.

The salt depot was an immense, decaying wooden A-frame structure, half-filled with tons of coarse road salt, rusted plows, and derelict state maintenance trucks. David kicked through a warped wooden service door and slammed it shut, dropping the heavy wooden crossbar into place.

"Leah!"

From behind a mountain of gray rock salt, Leah stepped out. She had found an old emergency wool blanket in a rusted plow cab and had bundled Maya tightly against her chest. Maya was shivering, but her eyes were alert, tracking David instantly.

"He's dying, Leah," David panted, laying Asset 409 onto an upturned wooden crate under the dim shafts of light filtering through the rotting roof. "The tracker is an artificial pacemaker. Cassandra is shutting down his autonomic functions remotely."

"How do we stop it?" Leah cried, falling to her knees beside the baby. "We don't have medical equipment! David, look at his chest—it's barely moving!"

David grabbed the contractor’s tactical radio. He switched the frequency dial until he hit the primary command channel.

"Cassandra!" David shouted into the mic. "Turn it off!"

A burst of static hissed across the speaker. Then, Cassandra’s voice came through, cool and immaculate, as if she were sitting in a high-rise corner office rather than hovering in a warship above a snowy graveyard.

*Good morning, David. I must commend you. Surviving the demolition of the rotunda was an extraordinary feat of raw biological resilience. It only confirms the genetic superiority of Julian's work.*

"Turn off the regulator, you sick bitch, or I will smash his skull against the concrete right now!" David roared. "You want Asset 409? You'll recover a corpse!"

A dry, chilling laugh echoed through the radio.

*You won't do that, David. You are your mother's son. You possess the curse of sentimentality. If you were capable of killing that child, you would have left him to burn in the pod. But you didn't. You carried him out with your own daughter.*

"What do you want, Cassandra?" Leah screamed into the radio, her voice breaking with raw, maternal fury.

*I want what belongs to the Board,* Cassandra replied smoothly. *Asset 409 is the military application. Maya is the cellular longevity prototype. Bring both children to the old freight railyard at the base of the mountain in twenty minutes. If you do, I will let Leah walk away. If you don't... I shut down 409's pulse entirely, and my team burns that shed to ash with you inside it.*

The transmission went dead.

On the crate, Asset 409’s breath hitched. A thin line of blue saliva formed at the corner of his lips. His heart monitor tone was slowing down:

*Beep.......... beep.......... beep..........*

"She's killing him," Leah wept, her hands hovering helplessly over the baby. "David, what do we do?!"

David looked down at the radio, then at the knife, then at Maya, who was staring at the clone boy with wide, strangely luminous eyes.