Chapter 6 - The Apex Legacy“Why?”
That was the only word that escaped my lips. It sounded pathetic, hollow, stripped of all the authority and power I had wielded across the continents for the past decade.
Victoria walked down the steps with slow, deliberate grace, her white suit spotless, unaffected by the grim, blood-soaked air of the basement. The armed men followed her, their assault rifles raised, laser sights painting red dots across my chest and forehead.
“Why?” Victoria repeated, stopping three steps above me, looking down like an queen inspecting a broken tool. “Because power built on human loyalty is fragile, Matteo. Men betray. Sons grow rebellious. Wives develop conscience. But power built on controlled genetic inheritance? That lasts forever.”
She pointed her pearl-handled gun toward the sealed vault door behind me.
“Your father—the real founder of the Rossi syndicate—realized forty years ago that our empire would collapse if left to normal human greed,” she explained, her voice steady and smooth. “He funded Project Apex. We engineered children stripped of weakness, built with higher physical capacity, hyper-focused minds, and absolute obedience coded into their baseline physiology.”
“I was never obedient,” I spat, blood bubbling on my lips.
“Because you were flawed!” Victoria fired back, a rare flash of genuine anger breaking through her icy demeanor. “You developed empathy! You looked at the people we ruled and felt pity! You fell in love with a woman sent to harvest you! That was the fatal glitch in Generation One!”
She stepped down onto the flat concrete, stopping just inches from where Dominic lay motionless in his own blood. She didn't even look down at his corpse.
“Grace—Dr. Vance’s daughter—was supposed to correct that error in Generation Two,” Victoria continued. “She was supposed to ensure the child was purely synthetic, an organic storage unit for all syndicate intelligence. But she betrayed us. She allowed human emotion to taint the process. She gave the child a real heart.”
“He is a child!” I roared, taking a violent step forward.
Six red laser dots instantly locked onto my heart.
“He is an asset,” Victoria corrected coldly. “And assets can be reformatted. Stand aside, Matteo. If you drop your weapon and let my team take the vault, I will let you live out your days in isolation. You can keep your little illusion of life.”
I looked at the six tactical soldiers. I looked at my mother. I felt the sharp, grinding pain of my broken ribs and the heavy, metallic pulse of my own heart beating against my chest.
A prototype.
Flawed.
Human.
A dark, cruel smile slowly spread across my face.
“You made one huge mistake in your design, Victoria,” I whispered, sliding my hand behind my back toward my tactical belt.
“And what is that?” she asked, raising her revolver.
May you like
“You gave Generation One the ability to choose how he dies.”
I pulled the pin on the thermite grenade attached to my belt and dropped it straight into the exposed electrical wiring of the estate’s main power junction box next to the wall.
