Chapter 5 - The Trap Springs ShutBefore Marcus could reach the cribs, the heavy oak door of the nursery didn't just open—it exploded inward in a shower of splinters and white-hot shrapnel.
The blast wave knocked Marcus off his feet, sending him crashing into the bookshelf. Smoke billowed into the room, smelling of sulfur and high explosives.
Through the haze, three figures stepped into the nursery. They wore full tactical gear, matte-black carbon-fiber armor, and helmets with night-vision visors glowing an eerie emerald green. In their hands, they carried customized assault rifles with biometric locking triggers.
And right behind them, leaning heavily on a silver-handled cane, walked Viktor Vance.
He looked older, his hair streaked with silver, and a jagged, ugly scar ran from the corner of his jaw down into the collar of his crisp turtleneck. But his eyes—cold, calculating, and utterly devoid of human warmth—were the exact same eyes Adrien remembered watching sink beneath the dark waters of Zurich.
"Hello, Adrien," Vance said, his voice smooth like oiled silk. He took a slow step into the room, breathing in the scent of baby powder and ozone. "I must admit, you’ve built a very nice cage. Too bad the birds inside belong to me."
Adrien didn't waste breath on words. He raised both pistols and fired with lethal precision.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The shots were dead-center, aimed right at Vance’s chest. But before the bullets could cross the room, the three tactical mercenaries moved with inhuman speed, forming a triangular human shield. The bullets pinged harmlessly off their carbon-fiber plating, not even leaving a dent.
"Still relying on brute force, Moretti?" Vance chuckled, stepping out from behind his guards. "How unimaginative. You never did understand the future. You thought wealth and muscle were power. But information? Genetics? Control? That’s the real currency of the world."
Vance gestured with his cane toward the cribs.
The triplets stood up simultaneously inside their cribs. Their little hands gripped the wooden rails, their eyes locked on Vance.
“Subject alpha, beta, and gamma reporting,” all three children spoke at once.
It wasn't their voices. It was a synthesized, mechanical echo that sounded like three speakers playing the exact same audio file with a microsecond delay.
Adrien’s vision darkened at the edges. "What did you do to them?"
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"I didn't do anything to them, Adrien," Vance smiled, stepping closer. "I did it through them. Nine months ago, your surrogate mother was slipped a proprietary nanotech vector during her routine medical checkups—checkups managed by my shell companies, of course. Your children aren't just Morettis. They are living, breathing quantum transmitters. Every breath they take, every neural impulse they fire, feeds data back to the Vanguard mainframe."
Vance tapped his temple. "And right now... they’re ready for the upload."
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