Chapter 60 - The Precipice of Genesis
There was only one way out of the valley: the abandoned logging bridge spanning the Blackwood Gorge, a four-hundred-foot chasm of churning white water and jagged granite boulders.
David and Leah ran.
They pushed through the snow-choked pines, David leading the way, his weapon drawn, clearing the path while Leah kept the children secure against her body. The freezing air burned their throats like crushed glass, every breath tasting of copper and pine sap.
Behind them, the distinct, rhythmic pops of suppression fire echoed through the woods as the strike team hit the railyard, sweeping outward in an aggressive wedge formation.
Ten minutes later, they broke through the final thicket of birch trees.
The gorge opened before them—a terrifying drop into absolute oblivion. Spanning the void was an ancient timber-and-iron railway trestle, half its cross-ties rotted through, its rusted rails suspended over the abyss like spider silk.
On the other side of the bridge lay the state forest boundary—and beyond that, the untraceable labyrinth of the Appalachian trails.
"We can't cross that!" Leah shouted over the deafening roar of the river below. "David, the wood is rotten! It won't hold our weight!"
"It’s the only way," David said, turning around to face the woods.
Fifty yards away, the brush parted.
Stepping into the clearing were four men wearing unmarked, state-of-the-art combat uniforms, their faces concealed behind matte-black ballistic masks with glowing green night-vision lenses. But they didn't raise their weapons.
Instead, they stepped aside, snapping to attention.
Walking out between them was a tall, immaculate figure in a heavy cashmere trench coat, leaning lightly on a silver-headed cane. He was an older man, perhaps seventy, with striking, aristocratic features and piercing blue eyes that seemed impossibly familiar.
The man looked at David. Then his eyes drifted to Leah. And finally, they settled on the two infants.
A slow, devastating smile spread across the old man's face.
"You really have your mother's stubbornness, David," the man said softly, his voice carrying effortlessly over the roar of the chasm.
David froze. His breath caught in his throat. The ceramic pistol in his hand suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
"Who are you?" David demanded, his voice trembling for the first time in this entire nightmare.
The old man lowered his silver cane, resting both gloved hands on its handle.
"Julian was a brilliant geneticist, but he was a terrible brother," the man said with a cold, affectionate chuckle. "He honestly believed he could take my proprietary research, take my money, and hide away in this pathetic valley to build himself an heir."
The man took one step forward. The four soldiers moved with him in terrifying synchronization.
"I am Arthur Sterling," the man said. "The Chairman of the Sterling Genesis Board. And you, David... are not Julian’s son. You were my very first prototype, thirty years ago."
David’s world dissolved into a ringing void.
"David..." Leah whispered, terror clawing at her throat as she backed toward the rotting edge of the trestle. "David, look at his eyes."
The eyes were the exact, impossible, hypnotic blue as David’s own.
"You brought my family back to me, David," Arthur Sterling said, extending an open hand toward the cliff edge. "Hand over the children. Step back from the edge. Come home to the Board. Or take one more step backward, and let this entire bloodline end in the rocks below."
Behind David, a rotten timber groaned under the frost, giving way and tumbling four hundred feet down into the roaring white water.
David slowly lowered his firearm, glanced back at Leah and his two children, and then locked eyes with the man who claimed to have created his very soul.
"You made one mistake, Arthur," David whispered.
Arthur’s smile faded. "And what was that?"
David reached behind his back, grabbed Leah’s hand, and smiled.
May you like
"You taught me how to survive."
David leaned back into the void—and pulled his family into the abyss.
