Chapter 11 - The Puppet Master's Child
My hand hovered inches above my holstered weapon, every nerve in my body screaming in warning. The creature standing in the doorway looked like a innocent three-year-old girl in a pink nightgown, but the cold, calculating detachment in her dark eyes belonged to a seasoned killer.
"Don't even try it, Dominic," Lily said, her voice smooth, level, and utterly devoid of the innocent lisp she had used hours earlier.
She unzipped the seam of her teddy bear with one hand, pulling out a custom, ultralight suppressed firearm. Her grip was flawless, her stance adjusted in a split second to cover my heart.
"What are you?" I rasped, my throat dry as ash.
"Project Vanguard, Phase Four," she answered calmly. "Pituitary suppression combined with advanced neural programming. I’m twenty-two years old, Dominic. I’ve just been modified to look like a toddler so I can bypass security detail that heavy artillery could never touch."
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. The white sneakers, the trembling lip, the tearful eyes—it was all a grotesque, perfectly executed act.
"Why the cake?" I demanded, keeping her talking while my fingers quietly edged toward the silent alarm button under the rim of my desk. "If you wanted to kill Ethan, why stop him?"
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"Because killing Ethan was never the target," Lily replied, a faint, sinister smile touching her child-like lips. "The poisoned cake was designed to make you eliminate your own mother and brother for us, stripping away your internal defenses. You did all the heavy lifting, Dominic. And as for that alarm button under your desk..." She tilted her head. "I cut those wires forty-five minutes ago."
Before I could react, the door behind her opened wider, and a figure stepped out from the shadows of the hallway.
