They’d been watching that little girl since before she was even conceived. Watching and waiting to see if their experiment would work.
I thought of Evelyn at Hope’s Embrace, how fiercely she’d protected Sophia. How she’d run into the night with nothing but her daughter and the clothes on her back. How she’d looked atme with those watchful eyes and asked me to promise I’d keep them safe.
She’d been running from Langston, but the real threat had been shadowing her the whole time. Waiting. Watching their prototype grow.
“What markers?” Flynn asked, his voice tight. “Who did they use?”
I found another file: [PROJECT GENESIS - ENHANCED GENETIC COMPATIBILITY PROFILES - PATERNAL SOURCE: SUBJECT L-7]
Subject L-7.
The room tilted. My mouth went dry.
No. Not him.
But I’d seen that designation before, in files Kate had pulled on Innovixus’s super-soldier program. Subject L-7 had been one of their early successes--a soldier they’d modified with enhanced healing, increased strength, metabolic efficiency. A man who’d escaped their program years ago and had been running ever since.
Gage.
They’d used Gage’s genetic material--probably taken during his captivity, when they were cutting him open and rebuilding him into something he’d never asked to be--and combined it with Evelyn’s eggs to create Sophia.
My chest felt like it was caving in. A child designed from conception to have the enhanced traits they’d tortured into her biological father. A little girl who smiled at me and called me Vigi and had no idea what she was. What they’d made her to be.
And Gage. Jesus Christ, Gage.
He had a daughter. A five-year-old daughter with Evelyn’s eyes and his DNA and his genetic modifications, and he didn’t even know she existed.
“They made her from one of their own experiments,” Rafe said quietly, his voice hollow. “Used his DNA without consent to create the next generation.”
The document detailed genetic modifications already present in Sophia’s DNA thanks to her paternal heritage. Enhanced healing factors. Increased neural plasticity. Metabolic efficiency. All the traits they’d forced into subjects like Gage through brutal experimentation, but inherited naturally by his biological daughter.
My hands curled into fists. I wanted to put them through the screen. Through the walls. Through the faces of every scientist who’d sat in their sterile labs and decided that Evelyn’s body and Gage’s genetic material were just resources to exploit.
“They want her because she’s proof their program works,” Rafe said quietly. “She’s what they’ve been trying to create all along.”
“She’s a child,” I bit out, my voice raw. “She’s a scared five-year-old kid who draws butterflies and asks about her stuffed rabbit and doesn’t understand why people keep trying to hurt her mother.”
Flynn’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Trent?—”
“They stole Gage’s DNA while they were torturing him. Stole Evelyn’s eggs during what she thought were fertility treatments. Created a child without either of them knowing or consenting.” I shoved back from the computer, needing distance from the words on that screen. “And now they want to take that little girl and do to her what they did to Gage. Put her on a table and cut her open and see what she can survive.”
Over my dead body.
“We need to tell him,” Rafe said quietly. “Gage. He needs to know.”
“Fuck.” I hated it, but he was right. And it had to come from me. I sucked in a fortifying breath and keyed my comm unit,forcing my voice steady despite the rage building in my chest. “Alpha Vigil to All Teams. Do you copy?”
Static crackled, then Ethan’s voice came through. “Go for Grim.”
I knew I needed to stay on task, but I couldn’t help asking, “Is she safe?”
“Clarity is secure,” he confirmed.
The name hit me harder than it should have—her name from the compound, now repurposed for this operation. She’d hesitated when Kate suggested it, but then agreed.
“I’d rather own it than let it own me,”she’d said.
She was so strong.
