Chapter 45: The Broken Cradle
Chapter 45: The Broken Cradle
The room at the top of the stairs was bathed in a soft white light.
A high-tech incubator sat in the center, its monitors humming quietly. Sarah threw the door open, her heart in her throat.
"Hope..." she whispered.
She lunged toward the incubator, but as her hands touched the glass, her breath caught.
The incubator was empty.
Inside lay only a small, electronic speaker playing a looped recording of a baby’s heartbeat. Beside it was a silver tray containing a single vial of dark, crimson blood and a surgical scalpel.
"They already took it," a voice said from the shadows.
Julian Vance stepped out from behind a high-density server rack. His left arm was in a sling, his face pale and sweating from infection. He was holding a remote terminal connected directly to the data center’s main line.
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"They didn't need the baby to stay here, Sarah," Julian said, his voice trembling with a terrifying mix of fear and triumph. "They extracted the genetic material from her heel mark twenty minutes after she landed at Heathrow. The code is already uploading to the global mainframe in Zurich. The Vance fortune... the Sterling assets... they’re currently being dissolved into a single sovereign wealth fund owned by The Consortium."
He looked at her, his eyes hollow. "We're both pawns, Sarah. My mother, your father, Arthur... we were just the distraction."
