CHAPTER 6 — Christmas Child
CHAPTER 6 — Christmas Child
Emergency lights flickered red across the hallways.
Smoke poured through the ventilation system.
Patients screamed.
Doctors rushed stretchers toward stairwells.
The hospital had become another battlefield.
Except this time...
My family was the target.
Director Hayes handed me a handgun.
"I was told you'd never carry one again."
I stared at it.
After retiring from Delta Force, I'd promised Emma I would never fire another shot unless it was to protect our children.
I loaded the magazine.
"I intend to keep that promise."
Three armed men dressed as tactical police entered the ICU wing.
Their uniforms were perfect.
Their badges were fake.
The first man never saw me.
I struck him with the fire extinguisher before he raised his rifle.
The second reached for his weapon.
Hayes shot him once.
The third fled.
Not toward the exit.
Toward Lily's room.
"No!"
I sprinted after him.
He kicked open her hospital door.
The bed...
Was empty.
For one terrifying second my heart stopped.
Then I heard a tiny voice behind me.
"Daddy."
Lily stood inside the supply closet.
A nurse had hidden her there when the shooting started.
The assassin smiled beneath his mask.
"So that's the real target."
He raised his rifle.
I tackled him before he fired.
The rifle discharged into the ceiling.
Sprinklers exploded overhead.
Water rained through the room.
We crashed into the hallway, trading blows.
He fought like military special forces.
Fast.
Precise.
Merciless.
But rage outweighed technique.
I disarmed him.
Pinned him.
Ripped away his mask.
I recognized him instantly.
Colonel Nathan Briggs.
The commanding officer who had reported my unit dead during the Fort Halstead incident.
The man I had trusted.
"You?" I whispered.
He smiled through broken teeth.
"You were never supposed to survive either."
Briggs laughed even as federal agents surrounded him.
"You still don't understand."
He looked toward Lily.
"She isn't just Emma's daughter."
He nodded toward the little girl.
"She's the final Christmas Child."
Director Hayes froze.
"What did you say?"
Briggs grinned.
"Emma passed the genetic resistance to her."
The room went silent.
"Lily is immune."
"Immune to what?"
"Everything."
Poisons.
Chemical weapons.
Biological agents.
The perfect human test subject.
That was why they had waited six years.
Not to kill Emma.
To find Lily.
Before anyone could question him further...
A single suppressed gunshot echoed from somewhere outside the hospital.
Briggs jerked violently.
A neat red hole appeared in the center of his forehead.
He collapsed instantly.
Sniper.
Professional.
Silenced forever.
One less witness.
Chaos erupted again.
Agents rushed to the windows.
The sniper was gone.
Only one thing remained on the rooftop across the street.
A small gift box wrapped in red Christmas paper.
Inside the box was a photograph.
Emma as a little girl.
Standing beside another child.
This time, the second face wasn't torn away.
It was a little boy.
On the back, written in faded ink:
SUBJECT ONE
Below it...
A handwritten message.
"You have found the daughter. Now find the son."
Director Hayes stared at the picture, visibly shaken.
His voice was barely above a whisper.
"Impossible..."
I looked at him.
"What?"
He slowly turned the photograph toward me.
The little boy's face looked hauntingly familiar.
Not like Noah.
Not like Lily.
Like me.
Hayes swallowed.
"David..."
"...before you joined Delta Force, were you ever told where you were before the age of five?"
My pulse thundered.
"I was adopted."
Hayes closed the file in his hands.
"Then we've all been asking the wrong question."
He looked directly into my eyes.
"You weren't assigned to protect Project Christmas Child..."
May you like
His next words changed my life forever.
"You may have been its very first survivor."
