Chapter 49 - The Price of Paternity
Jonathan and Cole sprinted back through the lower corridors, Jonathan cradling Noah tightly beneath his coat, sheltering the infant's face from the drafts. Cole led with his sidearm drawn, moving through the shadowy junctions with tactical precision.
When they reached the blast door of Room 04, the smell of ozone had been replaced by the bitter tang of burning electronics.
Arthur was slumped on the floor near the server racks, clutching his shoulder where dark blood was seeping through his parka.
"Arthur!" Jonathan rushed to his side, kneeling down while keeping Noah shielded.
"I'm alright... grazing shot," Arthur wheezed, gritting his teeth in pain. "Two men in tactical gear. Professional extraction team. They came through the secondary ventilation shaft five minutes after you left."
"Did they take anything?" Cole demanded, securing the doorway.
"Not physical records," Arthur whispered, pointing a bloodstained hand toward the glowing terminal screen. "They uploaded a master purge worm into the Vance trust archives. But before they wiped the root drive, I managed to siphon thirty seconds of their encrypted data traffic."
Arthur looked up at Jonathan, his eyes wide with disbelief.
"Victoria didn't organize this, Jonathan. She thought she was the mastermind, but she was just an asset. An operative."
"Operative for who?" Jonathan asked, his voice dead and cold.
"The Sterling Foundation," Arthur said. "Victoria’s legal surname isn't Sterling. It was an alias assigned by an offshore biomedical consortium based out of Zurich and Singapore. They’ve been acquiring high-profile genetic lines from prominent families for twenty years under the guise of private medical trusts."
Jonathan looked down at Noah, who had finally exhausted himself and fallen into a light, whimpering sleep against his chest.
"Why?"
"Because your father’s family wasn't just wealthy, Jonathan," Arthur said, his voice trembling. "In nineteen seventy-two, your father co-patented the primary synthetic delivery vector used in modern gene therapy. The intellectual property rights to that vector don't belong to the Vance Corporation. They belong strictly to the direct biological descendants of Julianna and Jonathan Vance, through a bloodline trust established in Switzerland."
"The consortium wanted the bloodline," Cole said, understanding dawning on his face. "If Victoria raised the children under her legal guardianship, she would control the patents worth tens of billions."
"And if she failed," Arthur added, "the secondary contingency was triggered."
"What contingency?" Jonathan asked, a cold knot tightening in his stomach.
Arthur turned the cracked screen toward him.
A live GPS satellite feed showed a black, unmarked corporate helicopter lifting off from a private helipad less than four miles away, heading south-southeast toward Westchester County.
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Toward Jonathan’s private estate.
Toward the sanctuary where four-year-old Lily was sleeping under guard.
