Chapter 18
TRENT
While Flynn bound the technicians and Rafe recovered his breath, I examined the computer setup. What I found made my throat go dry.
This wasn’t just transmission equipment. The main console sprawled across three workstations, each screen displaying different data streams. One showed a satellite view of Garnett, overlaid with blinking dots—blue for controlled subjects, red for “resistant” individuals.
Another screen displayed biometric data: heart rates, body temperatures, neural activity patterns, all tied to individual subjects. They weren’t just controlling these people. They were monitoring them like lab rats, collecting data on their responses.
The third screen showed security feeds from the mining facility.
My stomach turned as I watched the images cycle through holding cells.
Men and women strapped to hospital beds, electrodes attached to their heads, some thrashing against restraints while others lay unnaturally still.
Among them, I recognized faces from town: Beth Morris and others who must have resisted the initial control attempts.
This wasn’t just mind control. This was torture disguised as science.
“Jesus,” Flynn breathed, looking over my shoulder. “How many people do they have?”
“At least twelve by my count.” I pulled a data drive from my pocket and jammed it into a port on the main system. “Downloading everything. Oz and Kate will need this.”
The feed switched to a larger room, where white-coated technicians moved between beds containing more townspeople—these ones docile, staring at the ceiling with the same vacant expression I’d seen on Beth’s face.
One technician adjusted an IV bag that was infusing clear fluid into a teenage boy’s arm.
Another checked readings on a tablet connected to electrodes on an elderly woman’s head.
Rafe’s jaw tightened. “Town’s not the endgame. It’s the beta test.”
My attention caught on another screen, this one showing a communications log. Most were routine reports, status updates time-stamped throughout the day. But one folder labeled “Executive” stood out from the others.
I clicked it open, revealing dozens of messages.
[SECONDARY ASSET RECOVERY PROTOCOLS]
[PHASE TWO IMPLEMENTATION TIMELINE]
[PRIMARY INVESTOR DIRECTIVES RE: WINSLOW SUBJECTS]
My finger hovered over the third file, heart pounding. I opened it, and a partial message appeared through the encryption:
[PRIMARY INVESTOR CONFIRMS PRIORITY ON EMMA WINSLOW RECOVERY. SUBJECT POSSESSES GENETIC MARKERS OF INTEREST. MOTHER EVELYN WINSLOW SECONDARY PRIORITY. USE MINIMUM FORCE ON CHILD.]
Emma.
Sophia’s birth name—the one on her original birth certificate. The name only Langston would know.
This wasn’t a simple revenge operation. Something bigger was happening, something that made Sophia valuable beyond being Langston’s daughter.
“Son of a bitch,” I breathed, ice flooding my veins. “They’re not after Evelyn.”
Flynn leaned closer. “What are you seeing?”
“They want Sophia.” I pointed to the message. “But look at this—‘genetic markers of interest.’ She’s not just his daughter. She’s something else to them. Something they need.”
“Innovixus?” Rafe suggested, his voice tight.
Jesus. After what those bastards had done to Gage, I hoped to hell not. But the pieces were clicking into place. Gage’s super-soldier modifications. The biohacking experiments. The genetic engineering. And now this: a five-year-old girl with “genetic markers of interest.”
I scrolled through more files, my gut churning. Project folders with clinical names: GENESIS PROTOCOL. BLOODLINE VIABILITY TESTING. ENHANCED HEREDITARY TRAITS.
One file made my blood run cold: [SUBJECT E-001 - EMbrYONIC DEVELOPMENT - MATERNAL DNA: WINSLOW, E. / PATERNAL DNA: CLASSIFIED MILITARY ASSET]
My hands shook on the keyboard.
No. No, they couldn’t have—
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed.
Flynn leaned closer. “What?”
I pulled up another file, this one containing medical records.
Fertility clinic visits. IVF treatments that Evelyn had gone through, thinking she was conceiving with her husband’s genetic material.
I could picture her there--vulnerable, desperate for a child, trusting the doctors Langston had paid for.
Trusting that what they put inside her body was what she’d agreed to.
Except the sperm they’d used hadn’t been Langston’s.
“They used her,” I said, my voice shaking with barely controlled rage. “Evelyn went through IVF thinking she was having Langston’s child. But they switched the genetic material. Used someone else’s--someone they’d already experimented on.”
My throat closed. Evelyn had carried Sophia for nine months, loved her from the moment she learned she was pregnant, fought like hell to protect her from Langston. And the whole time, Innovixus had been watching. Collecting data. Waiting to see if their experiment worked.
She’d been nothing but an incubator to them. A womb to rent.
Rafe moved closer to the screen, reading over my shoulder. “So Langston—”
“Isn’t her biological father.” The full horror of it crashed over me. “But Evelyn is her mother. They just made sure the father was someone with the genetic markers they wanted.”
More files confirmed it. Genetic profiles showing Sophia’s maternal DNA matched Evelyn perfectly--but the paternal markers came from an unidentified military subject.
Monitoring protocols that tracked Evelyn’s pregnancy week by week, feeding data back to Innovixus researchers.
Postnatal assessments documenting Sophia’s development against “expected parameters.”
They’d been watching that little girl since before she was even conceived. Watching and waiting to see if their experiment would work.
I thought of Evelyn at Hope’s Embrace, how fiercely she’d protected Sophia. How she’d run into the night with nothing but her daughter and the clothes on her back. How she’d looked at me with those watchful eyes and asked me to promise I’d keep them safe.
She’d been running from Langston, but the real threat had been shadowing her the whole time. Waiting. Watching their prototype grow.
“What markers?” Flynn asked, his voice tight. “Who did they use?”
I found another file: [PROJECT GENESIS - ENHANCED GENETIC COMPATIBILITY PROFILES - PATERNAL SOURCE: SUBJECT L-7]
Subject L-7.
The room tilted. My mouth went dry.
No. Not him.
But I’d seen that designation before, in files Kate had pulled on Innovixus’s super-soldier program.
Subject L-7 had been one of their early successes--a soldier they’d modified with enhanced healing, increased strength, metabolic efficiency.
A man who’d escaped their program years ago and had been running ever since.
Gage.
They’d used Gage’s genetic material--probably taken during his captivity, when they were cutting him open and rebuilding him into something he’d never asked to be--and combined it with Evelyn’s eggs to create Sophia.
My chest felt like it was caving in. A child designed from conception to have the enhanced traits they’d tortured into her biological father. A little girl who smiled at me and called me Vigi and had no idea what she was. What they’d made her to be.
And Gage. Jesus Christ, Gage.
He had a daughter. A five-year-old daughter with Evelyn’s eyes and his DNA and his genetic modifications, and he didn’t even know she existed.
“They made her from one of their own experiments,” Rafe said quietly, his voice hollow. “Used his DNA without consent to create the next generation.”
The document detailed genetic modifications already present in Sophia’s DNA thanks to her paternal heritage.
Enhanced healing factors. Increased neural plasticity.
Metabolic efficiency. All the traits they’d forced into subjects like Gage through brutal experimentation, but inherited naturally by his biological daughter.
My hands curled into fists. I wanted to put them through the screen. Through the walls. Through the faces of every scientist who’d sat in their sterile labs and decided that Evelyn’s body and Gage’s genetic material were just resources to exploit.
“They want her because she’s proof their program works,” Rafe said quietly. “She’s what they’ve been trying to create all along.”
“She’s a child,” I bit out, my voice raw. “She’s a scared five-year-old kid who draws butterflies and asks about her stuffed rabbit and doesn’t understand why people keep trying to hurt her mother.”
Flynn’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Trent—”
“They stole Gage’s DNA while they were torturing him.
Stole Evelyn’s eggs during what she thought were fertility treatments.
Created a child without either of them knowing or consenting.
” I shoved back from the computer, needing distance from the words on that screen.
“And now they want to take that little girl and do to her what they did to Gage. Put her on a table and cut her open and see what she can survive.”
Over my dead body.
“We need to tell him,” Rafe said quietly. “Gage. He needs to know.”
“Fuck.” I hated it, but he was right. And it had to come from me. I sucked in a fortifying breath and keyed my comm unit, forcing my voice steady despite the rage building in my chest. “Alpha Vigil to All Teams. Do you copy?”
Static crackled, then Ethan’s voice came through. “Go for Grim.”
I knew I needed to stay on task, but I couldn’t help asking, “Is she safe?”
“Clarity is secure,” he confirmed.
The name hit me harder than it should have—her name from the compound, now repurposed for this operation. She’d hesitated when Kate suggested it, but then agreed.
“I’d rather own it than let it own me,” she’d said.
She was so strong.
Would this be the thing to finally break her?
“Dutch is hit but stable,” Ethan added before I could ask. “We’ve repelled the initial attack, but Parker called for reinforcements before we neutralized him. We’re holding, but things are getting hot.”
“Copy that. We’ve got intel from the tower site.
” I kept my eyes on the screen, watching more files populate as the download continued.
“This is bigger than we thought. Bunny’s the primary target, not Clarity.
” I paused, bile rising in my throat. I hated using my nickname for Sophia like this.
“Clarity is Bunny’s biological mother. But Langston isn’t the father.
They used genetic material from Subject L-7 during the IVF without her knowledge or consent.
Bunny was designed from conception to inherit enhanced traits for their augmentation program. ”
The line went silent for a beat. Then another.
“Bunny is secure,” Alistair said finally. “She’s with me at rally point, unharmed, and she’ll stay that way.”
Then Gage’s voice cut in—raw, shaking, barely holding together. “Say that again. Subject L-7?”
“Lazarus—” Ethan started.
“Subject L-7!” His voice cracked. “That was my fucking designation. You’re telling me—“ He couldn’t finish. Couldn’t get the words out.
“They took your genetic material during your captivity,” I said quietly, and I’d never known heartbreak until that moment. It felt like my chest had been cracked open, and something with claws was scraping my hollow. “Used it to create her. You’re her biological father.”
The sound that came through the comm wasn’t quite human. Somewhere between a sob and a roar, choked off before it could fully form.
“Laz—“ Ethan tried again.
“No.” Gage’s voice went flat. Dead. The kind of calm that meant someone was about to do something catastrophic. “They’re fucking done. They made a kid—my kid—so they could torture her like they tortured me. I’m going in.”
“Negative, Lazarus. Hold position. That’s an order.”
The channel went silent. No acknowledgment from Gage. Just dead air.
“Shit,” I muttered, turning to Flynn and Rafe. “He’s going rogue.”
“And we’re surprised by this?” Flynn asked, heavy on the sarcasm.
“No,” I said. I’d known what telling him would do. But I also knew keeping it a secret would’ve been even more catastrophic.
Christ. How was I going to tell Evelyn?
“We’d better move fast,” Rafe said, nodding toward the data transfer that had just completed. “Grab that and let’s get these charges set. We need to be at that facility before Gage burns it to the ground.”
I yanked the drive free and pocketed it.
We worked fast, placing C-4 charges at structural weak points throughout the equipment building and at the base of the tower.
Each of us knew our role without needing instruction—Flynn securing the zip-tied prisoners safely away from the blast radius, Rafe calculating exact placement for maximum effect with minimum collateral damage, me setting the timers for a five-minute countdown.
Enough time for us to clear the area, not enough for anyone to disarm them.
“That should do it,” Rafe said, connecting the final detonator. “Five minutes starting now.”
I nodded. “Move out.”
We moved quickly down the ridge, using the cover of scrub brush and rock formations.
Behind us, the cell tower stood silent against the night sky, its red warning light blinking steadily.
In less than five minutes, it would be reduced to twisted metal and broken electronics, the control signal permanently disabled.
But the hard part was just beginning. The mining facility would be heavily defended, especially now that they knew we were coming. And somewhere between here and there, Gage was running his own operation, driven by demons we all understood too well.
I checked my watch as we reached our vehicle, hidden in a dry creek bed a quarter-mile from the tower. Two minutes until detonation. The timer inside my head—the one counting down to when I could get to Evelyn—ticked even faster.
Flynn slid behind the wheel, engine roaring to life. I loaded a fresh magazine into my weapon as the vehicle lurched forward over the rough terrain.
As we ate up the distance toward the mining facility, a thunderous boom shattered the night behind us.
The shockwave rattled the vehicle and pushed against my back.
I turned to see a brilliant orange fireball erupting where the cell tower had stood seconds before, metal twisting and screaming as it collapsed in on itself.
Debris arced through the darkness like deadly shooting stars, the concussion wave flattening the scrub brush for fifty yards in all directions.
“Damn, Rafe,” Flynn muttered, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror where the flames reflected. “I thought you said controlled demolition.”
“That was controlled,” Rafe replied, a rare smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “You should see what happens when I don’t hold back.”