Chapter 57 - Blood Mirror
Cassandra frowned. "What did you say?"
David didn't answer with words. He let go of the canvas bundle.
The package hit the frozen gravel with a heavy, metallic clatter—not the soft thud of an infant's body, but the sharp, ringing clang of two twenty-pound iron railroad spikes strapped to an unpinned fragmentation grenade stripped from the dead contractor.
"BOMB!" the lead mercenary screamed.
David was already moving.
He dropped flat against the frozen ties as the grenade detonated with a deafening roar. The shockwave ripped through the lead guard's legs, sending shrapnel tearing into the radiator of the center Suburban. Steam and boiling coolant erupted into the freezing air like a blinding white curtain.
From sixty yards away, perched high in the rusted cupola of an abandoned signal tower, the sharp *CRACK* of a hunting rifle shattered the morning.
The sniper round punched cleanly through the windshield of the right Suburban, striking the driver through the temple.
Up in the tower, Leah adjusted her bolt-action rifle—salvaged from the salt shed’s emergency locker—her face cold, bruised, and ferocious, Maya strapped securely to her back in a custom harness made of cargo straps. Beside her, tucked safely inside a thermal maintenance cooler lined with heated chemical handwarmers, Asset 409 was breathing steadily.
David hadn't brought the children. He had left them with a mother who was ready to wage war.
Down on the tracks, chaos exploded.
The remaining three contractors opened fire blindly into the steam, their carbines barking in full-auto bursts. David rolled behind the heavy steel wheel of a derelict boxcar, came up on one knee, and fired three double-taps through the billowing vapor with the contractor’s sidearm.
Two men dropped into the slush, their chest rigs torn open.
Cassandra was already retreating toward the third Suburban, her face twisted in venomous fury. "Kill him! Flank the tower! Bring me the infants!"
David sprinted through the smoke like a phantom. He caught the third contractor as the man was reloading, grabbed the barrel of his rifle, twisted it violently outward to snap the man’s wrist, and drove his combat knife straight upward beneath the operative's jaw.
The man collapsed in a heap of dead weight.
David stepped over the corpse, raising his weapon directly through the clearing smoke.
Cassandra was standing at the open door of the remaining Suburban, a chrome-plated automatic pistol leveled straight at David’s eyes.
Neither of them blinked.
"You think you’ve won, David?" Cassandra hissed, blood dripping from a small shrapnel cut on her temple. "You don't even know what you're fighting for. You think Julian built those children from scratch?"
David took one step forward, the gun in his hand perfectly steady. "Shut up."
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"Asset 409 is not Julian’s clone, David," Cassandra sneered, her voice trembling with manic amusement. "Asset 409 is *yours*. And Maya isn't just your daughter. She was genetically harvested from your wife before you even met her. You were chosen before you were born. Your entire marriage, your daughter, this entire nightmare—it was all scripted by the Board before you took your first breath!"
***
