Chapter 4
The tiny red numbers on the digital tablet pulsed against the woman's gloved hand, burning into the dim interior of the black sedan. Two minutes and forty-five seconds. The rhythmic blinking felt like a physical heartbeat echoing across the sunlit marble plaza. Julian stared at the screen, his mind calculating angles, escape routes, and the precise weight of the newborn baby resting in seven-year-old Leo's trembling arms.
“You think you can outrun a corporate injunction, Julian?” the woman in the charcoal-gray trench coat asked, her voice maintaining an eerie, conversational calm despite the crushed car door jammed against her vehicle. “That facility in the basement wasn't a prison. It was a containment protocol for genetic anomalies. The boy knows too much.”
“He knows how to ask for food,” Julian shot back, his jaw tightening as he stepped closer to the window, ignoring the subtle warning hum of the sedan's engine shifting into gear. “He knows what starvation feels like because your board members decided to test their latest metabolic suppressants on orphans.”
The woman's smile vanished, replaced by a fleeting shadow of genuine surprise before her professional mask snapped back into place. “Science requires sacrifice, Julian. You of all people should understand that. You signed the initial liability waiver four years ago.”
“I signed away my life, not theirs,” Julian said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. He reached out with lightning speed, his hand clamping onto the edge of the tablet. With a sharp, sudden wrench, he ripped the device from her grip, smashing its glass screen against the hard stone curb before she could react.
The woman didn't scream or flinch; she simply watched the shattered glass scatter across the pavement with cold detachment. “You just triggered the Level Four override. Every door in this sector is locking down right now.”
At that exact second, the grand glass revolving doors of the luxury hotel ground to a halt with a heavy, mechanical groan. Inside the lobby, the elegant chandeliers flickered once and died, plunging the interior into a deep, amber-tinted emergency light.
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Leo clutched the newborn tighter, crying out as a sudden draft of cold air swept through the courtyard. “Julian, the lights are going out!”
Julian spun around, scooping the boy and the baby into his arms in one fluid, powerful motion, balancing them effortlessly against his athletic frame. He bolted past the immobilized black sedan, heading not for the street, but straight toward the side alley where an old service elevator lay hidden behind a rusty iron gate.
