Chapter 113 - The Frozen Parapet
In the pitch black of the Swiss laboratory, motion was a matter of survival, not sight.
The moment the circuit died, I dropped flat against the frigid concrete, rolling two yards to the left. A split second later, three suppressed rounds ripped through the air where my chest had been, punching hollow, metallic holes into the steel hull of the empty cryogenic chamber.
Specimen 02 was fast. His neural responses hadn't been dulled by the cryogenic stasis; if anything, the biological enhancements Margaret had funded in this clandestine facility gave him visual accommodation far superior to mine in low-light environments.
*Click.*
He was re-aligning his sights by the sound of my movement.
I didn't draw a gun. In an underground cleanroom pressurized with volatile coolant vapors, firing a projectile weapon was an invitation to a catastrophic fuel-air explosion. Instead, I reached behind the maintenance console beside me and tore loose the pressurized ethylene-glycol conduit.
A high-pressure jet of supercooled liquid sprayed across the dark room.
The duplicate let out a guttural hiss as the minus-forty-degree chemical struck his bare torso and face, instantly freezing the moisture on his skin and blinding him. He fired two wild shots into the ceiling, showering us both with sparks and shattering fluorescent glass.
I closed the distance in two strides.
I tackled him around the waist, driving him hard into the rim of the medical workstation. He felt unnervingly solid—not like a man weakened by years of suspended animation, but like an athlete at the peak of physiological conditioning. His fingers found my throat with terrifying precision, his thumbs digging into my carotid arteries with mechanical, measured pressure.
"You... are... an obsolete draft," he hissed through clenched, frozen teeth. His face was an inch from mine; I could smell the antiseptic, chemical stench of the preservation fluid radiating from his skin.
"Then why did you need my biometrics to wake up?" I gasped, driving my right elbow hard into his exposed floating ribs.
There was a sickening crunch of cartilage. The duplicate gasped, his grip loosening just enough for me to wrench my neck free. I drove my knee upward into his groin, following through with a savage palm-heel strike to the bridge of his nose.
Bone cracked. He stumbled backward, blood pooling from his nostrils—dark, unnaturally viscous blood that looked almost black under the dying emergency LEDs that began to flicker to life along the baseboards.
I didn't wait for him to recover. I grabbed my encrypted laptop from the workstation desk, ripped the primary fiber link from the wall, and sprinted for the decontamination airlock.
" Julian!" his voice echoed down the corridor behind me, no longer composed, but laced with a frantic, animal fury. "You can't leave this mountain! The Alpine airspace is already restricted by the Swiss Federal Department of Justice! Thomas reported you as an international fugitive thirty minutes ago! You have no passport! You have no name!"
I slammed the emergency airlock lever down. The heavy hydraulic doors sealed shut with a deafening thud, locking Specimen 02 inside the cleanroom sector.
Breathing heavily, the cold mountain air burning my lungs as I reached the exterior maintenance tunnel, I opened the laptop. The screen flashed amber.
*WARNING: PRIMARY IDENTIFICATION OVERRIDE DETECTED.*
*SSN: XXX-XX-4819 DE-AUTHENTICATED BY SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.*
*PASSPORT REVOKED: RED NOTICE ISSUED BY INTERPOL.*
*CURRENT STATUS: DECEASED (PROBATE FILED).*
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Thomas had not merely tried to steal the money. He had filed a fraudulent death certificate in Cook County, backed by Beatrice’s testimony and Arthur’s forged medical records from Lutheran General. In the eyes of the global digital infrastructure, Julian Vance had died at 4:12 AM in an Illinois hospice.
And the man standing behind the steel airlock was about to walk out into the daylight as the sole, undisputed heir.
