Chapter 11 - THE BOY ON THE PORCHI stared through the peephole, paralyzed.
The boy standing on my porch didn't look like a stranger. The sharp curve of his jaw, the shape of his eyebrows, and the intense, piercing gaze were stamped with my exact genetic blueprint. He was older than Lily and Chloe, but younger than Maya—somewhere around eight years old.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Another slow, deliberate sequence of raps.
"Dad?" Lily’s hesitant voice called out from behind me in the hallway. "Who is it? Is someone there?"
I snapped out of my trance, shook off the sudden surge of cold adrenaline, and gripped the brass door handle. I twisted it and pulled the heavy front door open wide.
The cool evening air rushed in, carrying the scent of salt and pine.
The boy stood right where the porch light cast its warm, amber glow. He wore an oversized gray sweatshirt that looked identical to the one Chloe had worn the night we found her. In his small, dirt-smudged hand, he held a battered, leather-bound suitcase with a brass clasp.
"Are you... are you Ryan Davis?" he asked. His voice was steady, unnervingly mature for a child of eight, lacking the typical childlike tremor of fear.
"Yes," I breathed, kneeling down so I was eye-level with him. My chest felt tight, constricted by a wave of disbelief. "Yes, I am. What... what is your name?"
The boy stared at me for a long, calculating second before answering.
"Leo. Subject E," he said flatly.
My stomach plummeted. Subject E. The very file that had been locked behind dual biometric security on Dr. Thorne’s decrypted server just hours ago.
"How did you find this place?" I asked gently, keeping my hands open and empty, showing him I posed no threat. "The federal marshals cleared out all of Dr. Thorne’s facilities. You should have been placed in a secure transition facility."
Leo gave a dry, humorless chuckle—a sound far too cynical for a child.
"Dr. Thorne wasn't the only one running experiments, Dad," Leo said, his eyes darting quickly toward the dark treeline at the edge of our property. "And the facility I was in wasn't a hospital or a government lab. It was an underground bunker fifty miles south of here. And it just went dark thirty minutes ago."
Before I could ask what he meant, Maya sprinted out from the kitchen, stopping dead in her tracks the moment she saw the boy.
Her face drained of color.
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"Leo?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "You're... you're supposed to be in Sector Four."
"Sector Four burned down, Maya," Leo replied coldly, stepping past me into the house without an invitation, dragging his heavy suitcase behind him. "And the people hunting us are already on our tail."
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