Chapter 10 - The False Victory
I frantically searched the dark corners of the empty parking structure, my heart pounding violently.
"Ethan!" I shouted into the shadows, the echo of my voice swallowed by the heavy rain.
Sarah grabbed my arm, her eyes wide with a sudden, unexplainable panic.
"Where did he go?" she asked, looking wildly around the concrete pillars.
I pulled my stolen pistol from my waistband and stepped cautiously toward the edge of the garage.
I looked down at the rainy street below and saw a dark sedan idling silently by the curb.
Ethan was standing perfectly still beside the open rear door of the vehicle.
He wasn't running away, and he didn't look terrified at all.
He was staring directly up at me with an expression that lacked any trace of childhood innocence.
I sprinted toward the concrete stairwell, desperately needing to reach him before the car drove away.
I burst out of the ground floor exit and ran toward the boy standing in the rain.
"Ethan, get away from that car!" I ordered loudly, aiming my gun at the dark tinted windows of the vehicle.
Ethan slowly turned his head to look at me, and his lips curled into a cold, terrifying smile.
"You really shouldn't have transferred the money, Andrew," Ethan said.
His voice was entirely different, completely lacking the fearful stutter of the little boy I had rescued.
It was smooth, calculated, and deeply arrogant.
The rear window of the sedan slowly rolled down, revealing the face of the person sitting inside.
It was my wife, Sarah.
I froze entirely in place, utterly paralyzed by the impossibility of what I was seeing.
I looked wildly over my shoulder at the woman who had run down the stairs right behind me.
The woman standing next to me in the rain reached up and slowly peeled a hyper-realistic, bloody silicone mask from her face.
Beneath the mask was a highly trained, deeply scarred female mercenary I had never seen before in my life.
I looked back at the real Sarah sitting comfortably in the luxurious back seat of the dark sedan.
"You were right, darling," Sarah said to the boy standing outside the car.
"He was incredibly predictable when he thought he was playing the hero."
Ethan climbed casually into the back seat and sat right next to my treacherous wife.
The boy pulled out a small electronic tablet and showed the screen to Sarah.
"The four billion dollars has been successfully rerouted to our private accounts," Ethan reported efficiently.
I stood completely helpless in the freezing rain, realizing I had been played flawlessly from the very first second we bumped into each other.
David and Thomas hadn't been hunting Ethan; they had been actively working with Sarah to force me to transfer my wealth.
The eight-year-old clone looking back at me wasn't a victim of an experiment.
He was the highly intelligent, genetically engineered mastermind who had designed the entire trap.
"Thank you for your generous donation to our future, Andrew," the boy said coldly.
May you like
Sarah smiled beautifully at me one last time before the tinted window completely rolled up.
The dark sedan sped away into the stormy Chicago night, leaving me entirely bankrupt, framed for corporate terrorism, and staring down the barrel of the female mercenary's loaded gun.
