Chapter 32
Chapter 32: The Lazarus Engine
High above the Pacific Ocean, aboard a private, radar-evading Gulfstream jet, Daniel watched Alejandro sleep. The white light beneath the boy's skin had stopped flashing; it had settled into a steady, faint silver glow.
Daniel’s shoulder throbbed where Mariela’s bullet had grazed him, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the phantom chill in his chest. He had survived the plunge into the freezing Thames. Tomás had pulled him from the water, dragging him to a pre-arranged extraction boat while Clara’s snipers opened fire on the empty dock. They had escaped to a black-site clinic in Europe, where a rogue geneticist cloned the stabilization serum from the drive Daniel carried.
But something was wrong with Alejandro.
The boy was only nine months old, yet he didn't cry. He didn't babble. His eyes—intense, piercing, and terrifyingly analytical—followed Daniel’s every movement around the cabin. When Daniel handed him a silver coin, the infant didn't put it in his mouth. He balanced it perfectly on its edge on the tray table.
"He's doing it again, isn't he?" Tomás muttered, walking up from the back of the jet, his arm wrapped in a heavy medical sling.
May you like
"He’s just a baby, Tomás," Daniel said, though his own voice lacked conviction.
"No, he isn't," Tomás whispered, staring at the child with a mixture of fear and reverence. "I saw the deep-registry files before Aethelgard's London servers blew up, Daniel. They didn't just map our DNA to make a healthy kid. They used a process called neural imprinting. They didn't just copy Marcus’s blood. They copied his mind."
