Chapter 6 - The Woman in the Yellow Raincoat
The woman didn't run; she merely packed her knitting needles into a wicker basket with methodical slowness, never breaking eye contact with Agent Miller.
"Unit delta is local police," Miller cursed under her breath, holstering her gun and yanking Julian and Sharda toward a beat-up blue sedan parked illegally behind a row of trash bins. "Get in the back floorboards. Do not lift your heads for any reason."
"She's calling them," Sharda said, pressing her face against the dirty carpet of the car as Miller slammed the driver's side door and gunned the engine. The tires spun on the gravel before catching pavement with a screech.
Julian lay beside her, the hard metal of the car frame pressing into his ribs, but he didn't care. Through the rear window, he watched the woman in the yellow raincoat standing motionless beside the empty picnic pavilion, lifting a small black device to her ear.
"Agent Miller," Julian called out over the screaming roar of the engine. "She has the same radio Arthur had."
"It's a closed-circuit encrypted channel," Miller shouted back, her eyes darting between the rearview mirror and the winding park exit road ahead. "The Oakhaven Trust didn't just buy local politicians; they bought the entire municipal infrastructure. Every patrol car in three counties takes orders from the foundation board."
"Then where are we going?" Sharda asked, sitting up slightly despite Miller’s warning, her braided hair falling across her face. "If the police are looking for us, every highway will have a roadblock."
"We aren't taking the highway," Miller said, jerking the steering wheel hard to the right onto a narrow, unpaved logging trail that wound upward into the dense pine forests bordering the town. Low-hanging branches scraped violently against the sedan's roof like skeletal fingers. "We're going to the old railway switching station."
"The red train," Julian whispered, his eyes widening in the dim light of the floorboard.
Sharda froze. "You said the red train wasn't real."
"It wasn't real in the facility," Miller interjected grimly, gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white. "It was a freight line used to transport confidential cargo out of the Pine Street basement before the investigators could inspect the site in 2022. Your father helped build it, Julian."
The car bounced violently over a exposed tree root, throwing Julian against the door handle. He winced in pain but kept his gaze locked on the glove compartment, which sat slightly ajar. Protruding from the crack was the corner of a laminated identification badge bearing a photograph of a man who looked startlingly like Julian—except for a jagged scar across his left cheek.
"That's not my dad," Julian whispered, pointing a trembling finger at the badge.
Miller glanced down for a fraction of a second, her face draining of all color. "Julian, keep your hands down."
"That's my face," Julian insisted, his voice rising with mounting panic. "In the photograph. That's me with the scar. But I don't have a scar!"
Sharda reached across the floor and grabbed Julian's wrist, pulling his hand away from the glove box. "Julian, stop looking at it."
"No!" Julian shouted, wrenching his arm free and lunging forward to yank the glove compartment completely open.
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Inside, stacked neatly beneath a box of 9mm ammunition, were three identical laminated badges bearing Julian's face, each listing a different name, a different age, and a different birthplace.
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