CHAP 12: THE SECRET SOCIETY'S VAULT
💥 A MYSTERIOUS WOMAN STEPS OUT OF THE SHADOWS AND REVEALS HER FACE!
Marcus raised his shotgun, aiming it through the driver's side glass. "Don't move!"
The figure outside slowly raised two gloved hands, stepping into the dim beam of the interior cabin light. She pulled down her tactical face mask, revealing the sharp, aristocratic features of an older woman with striking silver hair and piercing blue eyes.
Julia gasped, dropping her phone. "Mother?!"
Marcus froze, his finger lingering on the trigger. "Julia... who is this?"
"Eleanor Sterling..." Julia whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of shock and betrayal. "My mother... she died ten years ago in a plane crash!"
"I didn't die, Julia," Eleanor said calmly, her voice smooth and devoid of fear. "I had to vanish to survive. And I’m the one who just saved your lives at the estate."
Marcus unlocked the doors, keeping his weapon trained on the elderly woman as she stepped into the rear passenger seat, looking down at the two young boys with cold, analytical eyes.
"You're one of them," Marcus stated, connecting the dots instantly. "You're on the Apex Board."
"I was one of its founding members, Detective," Eleanor replied without a hint of remorse. "Thirty years ago, we funded the genetic research that created the Nexus strain. Julia... you were the first successful carrier of the gene. But you were too weak to stabilize it. That’s why we needed your children."
"You turned my children into laboratory rats?!" Julia shrieked, reaching across the seat to grab her mother's collar. "You let them freeze and starve under a highway?!"
"It was never supposed to happen that way!" Eleanor snapped, her icy composure breaking for a fraction of a second. "Raymond Thorne went rogue! He took control of the Ravenhill facility, falsified the test records, and attempted to sell the twins' biological data to a foreign consortium on the black market!"
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"Where is Thorne taking them now?" Marcus demanded.
"He isn't taking them anywhere," Eleanor said, pulling an encrypted flash drive from her coat. "Thorne is heading to the Apex Vault beneath the Federal Reserve Building downtown. He’s going to initiate a total system wipe—erasing every trace of Project Nexus, along with the lives of fifty other children still trapped in auxiliary bunkers across the state."
