CHAPTER 5 – THE BLOOD THEY WERE HUNTING
CHAPTER 5 – THE BLOOD THEY WERE HUNTING
The warehouse doors burst inward in a storm of splintered steel.
Smoke grenades rolled across the concrete floor.
Within seconds, the building disappeared behind thick gray clouds.
"Down!" Dominic shouted.
Gunfire erupted from every direction.
Marco stood frozen, his pistol still pointed at me, tears streaming down his face.
"They have my little girl," he whispered. "They said they'd kill her if I didn't betray you."
A bullet struck the steel beam inches above his head.
Dominic didn't hesitate.
He tackled Marco to the ground just as another volley ripped through the air.
"You fool!" Dominic growled. "Victor Kane never leaves witnesses."
Outside, a voice echoed through loudspeakers.
"Thirty seconds."
"Hand over Emily Bennett."
"The twins walk away alive."
My heart pounded.
"They don't want you," I whispered.
"They want me."
Dominic looked at me with grim understanding.
"They've wanted you for twenty-six years."
Before I could ask another question, Marco reached into his pocket.
"I didn't betray everything."
He tossed Dominic a tiny encrypted flash drive.
"I copied their server before they caught me."
Dominic caught it one-handed.
"What's on it?"
Marco swallowed hard.
"Project Genesis."
A deafening explosion shattered the western wall.
Armed men poured into the warehouse.
Dominic grabbed the twins while pulling me toward an old freight elevator.
"This way!"
The elevator was dead.
No power.
Marco slammed his shoulder against a rusted maintenance door.
"It leads to the subway tunnels."
"Go!"
As we disappeared underground, Marco turned back toward the attackers.
"Take my daughter," he yelled into the smoke.
"But leave them out of this."
The gunfire answered him.
It was the last time I ever saw Marco alive.
The tunnels beneath the city stretched for miles.
Only our footsteps and the distant cries of the twins broke the silence.
Finally, Dominic stopped near an abandoned maintenance platform.
He inserted the flash drive into a rugged laptop hidden inside an emergency locker.
Folders filled the screen.
Thousands of files.
Medical reports.
DNA analyses.
Photographs of children.
Then one file opened automatically.
SUBJECT E-17
A childhood photograph appeared.
I gasped.
It was me.
Five years old.
Smiling with two missing front teeth.
Wearing the same yellow sweater my mother had kept folded in her cedar chest.
"What is this?" I whispered.
Dominic didn't answer.
He was reading.
The color drained from his face.
"Emily..."
"What?"
"They weren't studying you."
"They created you."
I stared at him.
"No."
"You were the first successful child born through Project Genesis."
My knees nearly gave out.
"They altered embryos."
"They engineered genetics."
"They were trying to create children resistant to neurological disease, immune disorders... and eventually capable of inheriting specific biological traits."
I couldn't breathe.
"My mother..."
"...wasn't your biological mother."
The words echoed through the empty tunnel.
"She volunteered."
My vision blurred.
"She chose to carry you after another woman disappeared."
Tears streamed down my face.
"No..."
Dominic closed the laptop.
"To her, you were never an experiment."
"You were her daughter."
"And she died protecting that truth."
The twins began crying again.
I looked at them.
"Are they..."
Dominic nodded slowly.
"Yes."
"They're Genesis children too."
Everything suddenly made sense.
The relentless pursuit.
The hospital.
The murders.
The hidden vaults.
Victor Kane wasn't chasing money.
He was reclaiming his greatest secret.
Hours later, Dominic led us into an abandoned church hidden between old brick buildings.
An elderly priest opened the door before we knocked.
"Dominic."
"It's been a long time."
"Too long, Father."
The priest looked at me, then at the twins.
His expression changed instantly.
"So... they've found the children."
"You knew?"
The priest sighed.
"I baptized them."
He turned toward me.
"And I baptized you."
I froze.
"You've known me?"
"Since the day your mother carried you into this church."
He disappeared into the chapel and returned carrying an old leather registry.
Inside were baptism records.
One page held my name.
Another held the twins'.
Across all three certificates appeared the same godmother.
Elena Moretti.
Dominic's late wife.
I looked at him in disbelief.
"Our mothers were protecting us together."
May you like
He nodded quietly.
"They knew one day we'd meet."
