Chapter 61: The Da Nang Protocol
Chapter 61: The Da Nang Protocol
The blinding white searchlight from the drone overhead bled through the cracks of the wooden stilt house, turning the interior into a cage of stark shadows.
Sarah didn't look at the light. Her eyes were locked on Mrs. Hargrove, who stood trembling in the center of the room. The old housekeeper, the one anchor of safety Sarah thought she had left, was just another piece of the grand chessboard.
"A simulation?" Sarah’s voice wasn't a sob; it was a terrifyingly quiet rasp. She didn't lower her Sig Sauer. "Thirty years? My marriage, my child... my mother's death?"
"Your mother was the first successful prototype, Sarah," Penelope whispered, her voice cracking as the drone’s rotors thundered above. "Thomas Sterling didn't lose her in '99. He harvested her. The Consortium isn't a banking syndicate, child. It’s a generational gene-mapping network. They needed a lineage forged in absolute trauma to activate the dormant synthetic markers in the DNA."
"Arthur!" Sarah shouted toward the open window, her heart hammering. "Arthur, get out of the tree line!"
No answer came from the mangroves. Only the terrifying, synchronized click of dozens of laser sights shifting across the wooden walls.
The satellite receiver on the table blinked with a violent blue frequency. Leo’s voice cut through the static again, closer now, echoing from a patrol boat tearing through the nearby river channel.
"The drone has a tactical strike lock on your coordinate, Sarah. You have exactly sixty seconds to step onto the dock with the child. If you don't, the Delta burns, and we harvest the tissue from the ashes. Don't make me a widower twice."
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Sarah looked at the mosquito net where Hope was starting to cry, terrified by the noise. Sarah’s thumb didn't hover over a flash drive this time. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, glass vial of local matching-grade river toxin she had prepared for the fish traps.
She looked at Penelope. "Tell my husband I'm coming out. But he’s getting the virus, not the password."
