Chapter 10 - The Second Faceless Enemy
Clara pulled the boys to their feet, shielding them behind her body as they scrambled away from the park entrance toward the cover of a dense grove of oak trees. The distant wail of sirens was growing louder, but the flashing red and blue lights didn't belong to local police cruisers. They were unmarked, high-intensity strobe lights mounted on sleek, industrial-grade vans that were sealing off every exit out of the neighborhood.
"Leo, who else is looking for you?" Clara demanded, her voice tight with panic as she checked Toby for injuries. The younger boy was shivering uncontrollably, his green jacket torn at the shoulder, but thankfully unharmed.
Leo wiped a streak of dirt and dried blood from his forehead, staring back toward the burning intersection on Elm Street. "Dad said if the black trucks found us first, we were dead. But if they found us first... the people in the white vans... it would be much worse."
"Who are the people in the white vans?" Clara asked, her heart dropping into her stomach.
"Internal Security," a flat, mechanical voice echoed from the shadows behind the oak trees.
Clara whipped around. A man dressed in a plain gray trench coat stepped out from the darkness, holding a sleek tablet device that glowed with a cold blue light. He wasn't wearing tactical gear or carrying a assault rifle, which somehow made him infinitely more terrifying.
"Step away from the children, Ms. Henderson," the man in the trench coat said calmly, raising his left hand to reveal a federal badge clipped to his lapel. "Federal Oversight Division. Those boys are in possession of classified bio-synthetic property stolen from a secure government facility."
"They are twelve and six years old!" Clara shouted, stepping defensively in front of Leo and Toby. "They don't own anything except the clothes on their backs!"
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"And a leather suitcase containing seventy-two gigabytes of unauthorized viral sequencing data," the federal agent replied, taking another slow, deliberate step forward. "Hand over the case, Clara. Or we lock you away for harboring a domestic terror cell."
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