🚨 HE THOUGHT HE WAS SAVING HIS GRANDFATHER. HE WAS HELPING A KILLER.

Leo stumbled back, hitting the side of Clara’s dented black SUV. His neck burned where Arthur had ripped the tracker out, a thin trail of blood soaking into his collar.

"You're lying," Leo stammered, looking between his grandfather and this wild-eyed stranger. "My dad is an accountant! My mom died in a car crash when I was three! You have Alzheimer's, Grandpa! You've been living in the assisted living facility for eighteen months!"

"Assisted living?" Clara spat a mouthful of blood onto the pavement. "Kid, that wasn't a nursing home. That was a black-site holding facility run by Apex Vanguard. Your 'father' is Richard Sterling—the chief architect of Project Aegis."

"Get in the car," Arthur ordered harshly, opening the rear door of the SUV.

"No!" Leo yelled, tears finally breaking through his shock. "I'm calling the police!" He whipped out his smartphone, his thumbs frantically tapping 9-1-1.

Before the call could connect, Clara snatched the phone out of his hand, threw it onto the pavement, and shot it with a suppressed pistol she pulled from her jacket. The phone shattered into useless fragments.

"Hey!" Leo screamed.

"If that phone connects to a cell tower for more than three seconds, a drone strike will hit this parking lot before you finish saying 'help'," Clara said without a hint of irony. She grabbed Leo by the front of his shirt and shoved him into the back seat of the SUV. "Sit down, shut up, and put your seatbelt on if you want to stay alive past dinner."

Arthur climbed into the passenger side, while Clara slid into the driver’s seat. She slammed the SUV into reverse, tires screeching as she backed out of the lot and hit the main highway, weaving aggressively through afternoon traffic.

Leo sat in the back, trembling, staring at the back of his grandfather’s head. "Grandpa... please. Talk to me. What is happening?"

Arthur turned around in his seat. The feeble, stooped posture was completely gone. He sat straight, his shoulders broad, his blue eyes piercing.

"My name is Major General Arthur Vance," the old man said flatly. "Sixteen years ago, I led a covert biological defense division. We were working on a synthetic cellular repair protocol—a way to make soldiers immune to physical trauma, biological weapons, and organ failure. It was called the Prometheus Gene."

Leo stared at him blankly. "What does that have to do with me?"

"The project failed," Arthur continued. "Every test subject died. The human body rejected the synthetic strand... except for one embryo. An embryo created in a lab using my daughter's DNA."

Leo’s heart stopped. "My... my mom?"

"Your mother didn't die in a car crash, Leo," Arthur said, his voice cracking for a fraction of a second before hardening again. "She died in that lab trying to protect you when Apex Vanguard tried to seize the project. They didn't want to use the gene to heal people. They wanted to weaponize it. They wanted a living source of infinite cellular regeneration."

"You... you're saying I'm..."

"You are the only successful host of the Prometheus Gene," Clara said from the front seat, eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror. "Your entire life—your school, your friends, your 'father'—it was all an engineered farm. They let you grow until your body reached full skeletal maturity. Sixteen years old."

"And today," Arthur added grimly, "was your harvest date."

Leo pulled his knees up to his chest, his mind spinning into vertigo. It sounded insane. It sounded like a late-night conspiracy movie. But then he remembered the bomb. He remembered the cold precision with which Clara had shot his phone. He remembered how his grandfather had ripped a piece of metal out of his neck without flinching.

"If... if today was the harvest date," Leo whispered, "why was the bomb in the wheelchair?"

"Because," Clara said, turning the SUV down a dark, unpaved logging road that plunged deep into the dense pine forest, "that wasn't a bomb meant to kill you. It was a cryo-disruption charge. It was designed to paralyze your nervous system and freeze your brain activity so they could transport you to their facility off the coast."

Suddenly, Clara slammed on the brakes.

The heavy SUV skidded across the loose gravel, coming to a halt just feet away from a massive black oak tree that had fallen across the road, blocking the path.

"Tree fell recently," Clara muttered, reaching for her pistol. "Fresh saw cuts on the trunk. It's an ambush."

"Clara, reverse!" Arthur shouted.

Before she could shift gears, a heavy steel cable dropped from the canopy above, wrapping around the SUV's front axle. In a split second, the cable snapped tight, yanking the front end of the SUV three feet into the air.

The driver's side window exploded inward. A gloved hand reached through the shattered glass, grabbing Clara by the hair and slamming her head viciously against the steering wheel. She went limp instantly.

"CLARA!" Leo screamed.

The rear doors were ripped off their hinges with hydraulic force. Standing outside in the dim forest light were four men clad in matte-black tactical gear, wearing full-face gas masks.

Standing behind them, wearing an immaculate grey Italian suit, was a man Leo recognized instantly.

His dad.