Chapter 12
Chapter 12: The Ghost of Geneva
To get an independent DNA test processed without alerting the omnipresent remnants of the syndicate, Daniel knew he had to surface. He couldn't risk using any local mail services. He drove three agonizing hours through a blinding blizzard into the heart of Boston, using a clean, pre-established fake ID to bypass any automated highway facial recognition. He left Clara and the baby at the cabin, anchoring his departure with a calculated lie about "gathering heavy winter supplies and cash rations."
He arranged the meeting in the basement of a dingy, neon-lit diner on the outskirts of the city—a place where the smell of grease and stale coffee drowned out questions. Sarah, his former Chief Legal Officer, was already waiting for him in a secluded corner booth. She looked completely unrecognizable; her hair was unkempt, and dark, hollow circles framed her bloodshot eyes. She looked like a woman running out of time.
"You shouldn't have contacted me, Daniel," Sarah whispered frantically, her hands shaking so violently she could barely stir her black coffee. She didn't look up at him, keeping her eyes scanning the exits. "The entire Mendoza board is gone. Half of them are dead, and the other half are in federal hiding. The FBI has completely frozen our assets. Anyone who even touches your family name is disappearing from the grid entirely."
"I don't care about the board, Sarah. I need a blind, off-the-books DNA run on this sample. Right now," Daniel said, his voice a low command as he slid the sealed plastic vial across the sticky table. "And I need every single scrap of raw data you managed to download regarding Aethelgard’s Geneva facility from five years ago."
Sarah quickly snatched the vial, dropping it into the depths of her purse as if it were radioactive. She reached into her heavy winter coat and pulled out an encrypted, military-grade flash drive, sliding it back to him. "I dug this out of a secure backup server before a remote wiping virus destroyed our central database. It’s the raw, unedited patient log from the Geneva clinic. Clara wasn't just a random patient who walked in for financial aid, Daniel. Five years ago, she was listed in their system as 'Subject Alpha-0'."
Daniel immediately opened the files on his portable, air-gapped tablet beneath the edge of the table. His eyes scanned the extensive medical charts, data streams, and hormone graphs. There were high-resolution photos of a younger, teenage Clara in a sterile white room. But what made his heart stop completely was an encrypted log entry dated exactly four years ago—long before he had ever met her in that New York coffee shop.
Patient zero responded optimally to the targeted genetic implantation. Paternal donor match fully synchronized: Mendoza, T.
May you like
Daniel’s world tilted on its axis. Tomás. It was true. The baby belonged to his brother. But as his trembling finger scrolled down further through the encrypted metadata, his breath caught in his throat. There was a secondary line appended to the bottom of the document:
Backup genetic sequence harvested and held in reserve. Secondary donor match fully synchronized: Mendoza, D.
