Chapter 27 - The Glass Cage
The inside of the trailer was sterile, blindingly white, and smelled aggressively of antiseptic and ozone. It was a mobile surgical suite, crammed with monitors, centrifugal blood separators, and neural-imaging screens.
And in the center of the room, strapped to an inclined surgical gurney by heavy leather restraints, was a young woman.
My breath stopped in my throat.
She was pale—so pale her veins showed like blue lace beneath her translucent skin. Her dark hair was long, tangled, and damp with sweat. An intravenous line dripped saline and a dark, amber liquid into her forearm. But her face... it was the face that had smiled at me across the breakfast table a lifetime ago. A face grown older, etched with lines of exhaustion and pain, but undeniably my blood.
"Clara," I choked out, stumbling forward, my rifle slinging across my back as my knees nearly gave out beneath me.
Her eyelashes fluttered. She groaned, a weak, raspy sound, her eyes struggling to focus under the harsh surgical lights. When her brown eyes finally met mine, a flicker of raw, disbelieving shock cut through the heavy narcotic haze.
"So... Sophie?" she whispered, her voice cracked, like dry leaves crushed underfoot. "I'm... am I dead? Did the fire finish?"
"No, baby, no," I sobbed, tears spilling uncontrollably over my cheeks as I frantically pulled out my tactical knife and began slicing through the thick leather straps holding her wrists. "You're alive. You're alive and I found you. I'm taking you home."
"Sophie... behind you!" Clara screamed, her voice suddenly spiking with terror.
Instinct took over before my brain could register the warning. I spun, sweeping my blade upward.
A steel baton crashed down toward my skull. I blocked it with my forearm, the impact sending a jolt of white-hot agony through my bone. A towering man in a surgical smock and tactical vest—the lead technician—slammed his body weight into me, pinning me against the vibrating heart-monitor console.
"The girl doesn't leave!" he snarled, his fingers clawing for my throat. "The cipher extraction is eighty percent complete—"
I didn't argue. I drove my combat knife straight up under his jawbone, driving the steel through the soft palate into his skull.
His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the linoleum floor like an empty sack.
I turned back to Clara, tearing the IV needles from her veins. "Can you stand?"
"I... I can't feel my legs," she wept, trembling violently as I pulled her up into my arms. "They injected something into my spine... to stop me from running..."
Suddenly, a red strobe light began flashing on the ceiling of the trailer. A loud, rhythmic klaxon blared: *Lockdown initiated. Containment purge in three minutes.*
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Over my earpiece, Luca’s voice cracked through a wall of gunfire and static: "Sophie! The barge is pulling out! Mateo’s blowing the crane supports to cut off the river channel—get out of there now!"
***
