Part 3: Predators in the Dark
A deafening BANG shattered the air. The metal door of Unit 17 buckled violently as a massive black SUV rammed through it—the very same funeral vehicle that had carried my mother at the cemetery.
Shards of glass and choking dust erupted everywhere. Vance shoved me hard behind the metal table just as a volley of automatic gunfire tore through the room. The muzzle flashes illuminated the cold, calculated faces of men in dark suits.
"Julian! Move! Back exit!" Vance screamed, firing back with one hand while dragging me through a narrow side door that opened into a pitch-black alley behind the facility.
Rain had begun to fall, needles of ice against my skin. We sprinted to Vance’s unmarked car, the roar of pursuing engines and tires screeching right behind us. As the car tore onto the highway of Route 9, my phone lit up again. It wasn't a text this time. It was a video call.
Vance glanced at it. "Answer it, but don't say a word. We need to see where she is."
With trembling fingers, I swiped to accept. My mother’s familiar, gentle face appeared on the screen. She was sitting in our family living room. But her eyes held none of the warmth I had known my entire life. Behind her, Celeste—my wife—and my two young children were tied securely to chairs, their mouths taped shut, their eyes wide with sheer terror.
She smiled, her voice shifting into a chilling, unfamiliar European accent.
"Julian, my sweet boy. Your father thought he was so clever with this funeral theater. But he forgot that you and this little family are his greatest weaknesses. You have the biological key to the encryption, don't you? Bring it home within the hour. If you don't, I will inject Celeste and the children with the same compound your father 'suffered' from three days ago. It looks remarkably like a natural heart attack."
"You monster!" I screamed into the phone.
"I am the woman who raised you for twenty years, Julian. Never forget that. One hour. Alone. Or you can plan a funeral for the rest of your family."
The line went dead. I turned to Vance, my eyes bloodshot. "I have to go back. My family is in that house."
"It’s a trap, Julian! She has a whole perimeter team," Vance slammed her hand against the steering wheel. "But we don't have a choice. The key your father gave you... let me see it."
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I pulled out the brass key stamped with the number 17. Vance flicked on the overhead car light and used a pocketknife to scrape at the outer bronze coating. Beneath the metal was a fiberglass sleeve housing a microscopic vial filled with a dark crimson liquid.
"The code isn't numbers," Vance whispered, her eyes widening. "It’s your father’s synthetically encoded DNA. And to unlock it, it requires the blood of a direct descendant. If she gets her hands on this, thousands of innocent people around the world will die."
