The cell phone slipped slightly in my trembling hand, the screen glowing against the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital treatment room.

Through the dense, choking smoke, I heard Lucía’s voice crying out.

I dropped to my knees, coughing violently, waving my arms through the chemical fog. "Lucía! Mateo! Where are you?!"

"We're here! Untie us!"

I crawled blindly across the gravel until my hands brushed against Mateo’s jacket. Working entirely by touch, I found the heavy plastic zip-ties binding his wrists and tore them apart with my bare hands, ripping the nylon straps until they snapped. I immediately did the same for Lucía.

"Are you hurt?" I asked frantically, pulling them both into a tight, desperate embrace. ☕

"We're okay, Dad! But they took Katherine toward the loading docks!" Mateo gasped, coughing from the smoke.

Suddenly, a rustling noise came from behind a rusted iron railcar a few yards away.

I turned around sharply, pushing the twins behind me.

Through the thinning smoke, a small, familiar figure stepped out from behind the railcar wheel, holding a heavy iron pipe like a makeshift baseball bat.

Sofia.

Her face was smudged with dirt and soot, her hair tangled, but her amber eyes burned with an absolute, terrifying brilliance.

"Sofia!" I cried out in relief, rushing over to her and pulling her into the hug with Mateo and Lucía. "Thank God you're safe. How did you get away from them?"

"I hid in the drainage cistern behind the warehouse," Sofia said calmly, lowering the iron pipe as she looked at her brothers. "I saw them take Mateo and Lucía. I waited until their guard turned his back, hit him with a pipe, and followed them here."

She wasn't just a survivor anymore. She was a strategist.

"The feds have the perimeter locked down," I said, holding all three of my children close to my chest. "Katherine can't escape this time."

"She didn't escape," a sharp, familiar voice echoed from atop the metal loading dock above us.

We all looked up.

Standing on the rusted iron catwalk of the warehouse, silhouetted against the bright afternoon sky, was Katherine Vance. One of her arms was bleeding from a graze, but she held a heavy tactical remote detonator in her right hand, her thumb resting directly over the red activation button.

"If I'm going down, Dr. Rivera, I'm taking your entire world with me," Katherine screamed hysterically, her eyes wide with madness.

She pressed the button.