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Safehouse Tech Lab — 2:13 AM
The monitor's glow reflected off Ivy's face as the grainy video played again.
"Can you hear me, Leo?"
That voice—it wasn't Vincent's. It was female. Cold. Clinical.
Leo lay strapped to a gurney, eyelids fluttering under sedation. Monitors beeped, and behind him, Ivy could make out the blurred silhouette of a tall man in a white coat.
She scrubbed the screen, enhanced it, froze the frame.
The man bore a striking resemblance to someone Ivy had seen before—on a news clip about a now-defunct biotech firm. One funded by Hale Corp.
Aiden stepped into the lab behind her, shirtless, his voice low and rough from sleep. "You didn't wake me."
"I couldn't," she murmured. "I needed to see it again. I had to know."
He glanced at the screen, then at her. "And?"
"It's real," she whispered. "He was there. I don't know how or when, but… they did something to him."
Aiden clenched his jaw. "Vincent had his hands in every illegal biomedical research fund across Europe for the last decade. There's no telling what he tampered with."
Ivy turned to him. "We need that escaped patient, Aiden. Now."
Undisclosed Location — Outskirts of Berlin
A woman moved through a crumbling warehouse, her hair shorn close, her eyes flicking at every sound. She lived in shadows—always watching.
They called her The Ghost of OMEGA.
She remembered the boy. Not just his face—but his silence. How he never cried when the others did. How he stared at the ceiling like he already knew none of them were getting out alive.
She had escaped because he whispered a code in her ear one night during sedation.
"312-6-Kairos."
She didn't know what it meant. But she'd used it to unlock her chains.
Now, she waited.
Safehouse Conference Room — 6:34 AM
Maddie slammed a folder down on the table, her face pale.
"We found the woman. Her name's Anika Vos. Romanian-born. Ex-pediatric neurologist and lead assistant on Project OMEGA."
Aiden scanned the file. "Where is she?"
"Berlin. Deep off-grid. Getting to her won't be easy."
"I'll go," Ivy said.
Aiden stiffened. "No."
"I'm the only one who can convince her. She was there. She saw Leo. If I have to go through fire to protect him, I will."
"You already did," Aiden said darkly. "But this isn't fire—it's a war zone."
"Then I'll take a gun."
Private Jet — En Route to Berlin
The cabin was silent as Ivy stared out the window, the sky a soft shade of violet.
Leo's face haunted her.
What had they done to him? Had she ever really known her own child?
Aiden, seated across from her, broke the silence.
"When you gave birth… did he cry?"
Ivy nodded slowly. "He cried once. Then he went quiet. Too quiet. They told me he was just calm. But now I wonder…"
"Wonder if he was already changed."
"Yes."
Aiden reached over and took her hand. "He's still your son, Ivy."
Her voice trembled. "What if they built something inside him? What if he's… programmed?"
Aiden shook his head. "He's stronger than any design. Because he's yours."
Abandoned Cathedral — Berlin
Anika Vos stood at the altar, a rusted crucifix behind her. She didn't flinch when Ivy and Aiden walked in, their footsteps echoing.
"You brought security?" she asked, nodding toward Maddie and two guards.
"I brought the truth," Ivy said, stepping forward. "I'm Leo's mother."
Anika's breath hitched. "You found him."
"No," Ivy replied. "He found us."
The older woman lowered herself onto a pew. "They called him Variant Alpha. The youngest, and the only one who survived every trial."
"What trials?" Aiden asked.
"Neurological enhancement. Emotional suppression. Accelerated learning implants. They injected microtech, rewired synapses—he was engineered to be the prototype."
Ivy shook her head, horrified. "But he's just a boy. He plays with toy trains."
"Because you saved him," Anika said. "Love rewired what programming tried to kill."
Safehouse — Same Night
Leo sat on the floor with a crayon in his hand, sketching something frantic, wild—lines swirling into patterns that looked almost… coded.
Maddie watched, eyes narrowing. "What's that, bud?"
Leo didn't look up. "The dream again. The numbers are loud."
She leaned in. The shapes weren't random. They were coordinates.
She snapped a photo and sent it to Ivy's phone.
Berlin — Ivy's Hotel Room
The alert chimed. Ivy picked up the phone, opened the image.
Her eyes widened.
Coordinates.
One matched a facility just outside Zurich—an old research site tied to Hale Corp.
Aiden read over her shoulder. "He remembers."
"He was a baby," Ivy whispered.
"No. He was an experiment."