Chapter 5 - The Resurrection
"Dad?" Leo asked, noticing his father’s frozen state. "What is it?"
Arthur slammed his fist onto the steel desk, cracking the reinforced glass screen. "She's alive," he whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of fury and heartbreak. "She lied to me."
Four years ago, Arthur had held his wife's hand in a hospital room as her heart monitor flatlined from an aggressive form of illness. He had personally arranged her funeral. He had cried over her grave. It was her death that had pushed him to completely cut ties with "The Agency"—the shadow organization that trained elite wetwork operatives.
He had spent the last four years living off the grid, trying to give Leo a peaceful life. But now, the truth was unraveling like a pulled thread on a sweater.
Suddenly, every screen in the bunker glitched out. The satellite feeds vanished, replaced by static.
A high-pitched tone chimed through the bunker's speakers, followed by a voice—a smooth, elegant, familiar female voice.
"Hello, Arthur."
Arthur stood up instantly, putting himself between the desk speakers and Leo. "Sarah."
"You always were too good at reading thermal signatures, my love," Sarah’s voice echoed gently through the room. "I told Marcus not to bring the knife. He was always so dramatic. He ruined the test."
"Test?" Arthur spat, his eyes searching the room for any signal tap. "You sent armed mercenaries into a bank to threaten your own seven-year-old son?! Are you insane?!"
"I didn't send them to threaten him, Arthur. I sent them to evaluate him," Sarah replied coldly. "Look at him, Arthur. Look at the telemetry data on your own monitor. When Marcus held that knife to Leo’s face, Leo’s heart rate was 68 beats per minute. That isn't panic. That's cold-blooded tactical assessment."
Arthur turned his head slowly to look at Leo. The boy was staring at the speaker, his expression completely blank, showing neither joy nor sadness at hearing his mother's voice.
"What did you do to him, Sarah?" Arthur demanded, his voice dropping to a terrifying tone. "Before you faked your death... what did you do to our son?"
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A long pause stretched over the audio feed.
"You thought you were the only one taking work home from the laboratory, Arthur?" Sarah murmured. "Leo wasn't born. He was engineered. He is Project Chimera—the first of a new generation. And it's time for him to come home to the Agency."
