I was eleven when I found a bleeding stranger clutching two screaming newborns behind an abandoned Chicago warehouse, while grown adults walked past as if they saw nothing. I thought I was rescuing three strangers, until the dying man looked straight at me, called me Harper, and revealed that he had been waiting for me.

The wind on the roof was violent, cold, and smelled of rain and lake water. Sixty stories above the ground, the morning fog rolled across the concrete landing pad like a sea of grey clouds, obscuring the city below.

In the center of the pad sat a dark, sleek aircraft—a heavy quad-rotor transport drone with tinted glass panels and no visible registration marks. Its dual rotors were already spinning with a low, whistling hum that whistled in the cold air.

"Get inside!" Arthur shouted over the deafening roar of the rotors.

I scrambled up the short folding steps of the drone's side door, pulling Clara tight against my chest. The interior was compact, lined with cushioned bucket seats, four-point safety harnesses, and arrays of flight control screens. I fell into the rear seat, buckling the heavy harness over my shoulder with shaking hands while keeping Clara cradled securely in the fold of my jacket.

Arthur leapt inside behind me, placing Leo into the secured infant carrier beside my seat and tossing the briefcase into the floor compartment. He slapped the door-close button, and the heavy composite door sealed shut, instantly deadening the roar of the wind.

Before the door had fully locked into place, the roof hatch twenty yards away blew open in a shower of concrete dust and twisted iron.

Four figures dressed in black tactical gear with full-face visors poured onto the helipad. They didn't shout commands; they raised heavy, short-barreled rifles and opened fire directly on the transport drone.

THUD-THUD-THUD!

Heavy composite rounds slammed into the drone's armored glass panels, leaving spiderweb cracks across the outer layer, but failing to penetrate.

Arthur slid into the front pilot's seat, his fingers flying across the digital flight console. "Automated flight plan override. Initiating emergency launch sequence!"

The drone lurched violently as its four powerful electric rotors tilted forward. The g-force slammed me back into my leather seat as the aircraft blasted off the roof, dropping twenty feet into the foggy abyss of the sky before its stabilization thrusters caught the air, launching us upward through the heavy grey clouds at terrifying speed.

I held my breath, looking out the cracked side window as the glass tower vanished beneath us into the white mist. The gunfire stopped, replaced by the smooth, high-pitched whine of the electric engines.

"Are we safe?" I gasped, my chest heaving as I checked Clara. She was squirming inside my jacket, her tiny dark eyes wide, but she wasn't crying. Beside her, Leo was sound asleep, completely unbothered by the high-speed escape.

"We are airborne," Arthur reported, adjusting the navigation displays. "The drone is operating on an encrypted optical flight path. Sterling's team cannot track us using standard radar."

He turned in his seat, looking back at me with a small, approving nod. "You handled that with remarkable composure, Miss Miller. Your mother would have been proud."

"My mother was a scientist," I said, trying to stop my hands from shaking. "I'm just an eleven-year-old kid who knows how to run fast."

"Running fast is a survival skill," Arthur noted smoothly. "And you have spent your entire life preparing for this, whether you realized it or not. The resilience you developed on the streets of Chicago is the very reason you are sitting in this chair right now instead of panicking."

He tapped a button on the flight desk, and a small monitor in front of my seat lit up with a live diagnostic feed of Ethan's medical transport.

"Dr. Chen's team successfully evacuated via the sub-basement," Arthur said. "They are currently aboard a secure medical vessel traveling north along Lake Michigan. We will rendezvous with them at the Milwaukee safe facility in ninety minutes."

I looked out the window. Above the heavy cloud deck, the sun was fully risen, casting a blinding, golden light across a vast sea of white mist. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, yet I had never felt more isolated from the world below.

"Arthur?" I asked softly, watching the light bounce off the silver briefcase on the floor. "What happens when we reach Milwaukee? What is Victor Sterling actually planning to do with the twins?"

Arthur’s hazel eyes darkened as he looked at the flight instruments.

"Sterling believes that by analyzing the genetic code inside Clara and Leo, he can create a proprietary biological key," Arthur said quietly. "A key that will allow Vanguard Dynamics to control the genetic development of the next generation of synthetic medicines. Whoever holds that key controls the global healthcare market for the next fifty years."

"And what happens to the babies?"