The enhanced copy of her daughter had been hunting her for three days, and Maria Santos was running out of places to hide.Crouched behind industrial machinery in the abandoned steel mill—a rusting monument to Detroit's forgotten glory—Maria listened to Elena's footsteps echoing through the cavernous space with predatory precision. Each step fell with mechanical timing, the sound of someone who no longer needed to worry about fatigue, fear, or the basic limitations of human physiology. The thing wearing her daughter's face had tracked her across half the continent, following a trail that should have been impossible to detect without satellite surveillance and enhanced sensory capabilities.The mill stretched around her like a steel cathedral, its massive furnaces cold for decades but still radiating the ghost-heat of industrial ambition. Rust flakes drifted down like snow from the deteriorating roof structure, and somewhere in the darkness, water dripped with metronomic persistence. T

The sound of helicopter blades cut through the night like knives tearing fabric.Maria leaned against the SUV’s doorframe, heart hammering as the convoy sped beneath skeletal freeway lights. Smoke still trailed in the distance where Elena had destroyed the rear vehicle, but the danger wasn’t behind them anymore — it was above.Two helicopters shadowed their path, running dark with only faint navigation lights blinking like predators’ eyes. Their rotors pounded the air with steady menace, keeping perfect pace with the fleeing SUVs.“Agency?” Maria asked, her voice sharp.“Friendly escort,” Hale replied, though his tone cracked on the word friendly.Maria studied his profile. His eyes never left the road, but his grip on the wheel was too tight. She’d known Victor Hale long enough to recognize when he was lying.“If they’re friendly, why are their guns out?” she pressed.The helicopters shifted closer, their side doors sliding open. Mounted machine guns gleamed under the faint moonlight

Detroit, 02:17 a.m.POV: Maria SantosMaria Santos had always trusted fire to erase mistakes. It consumed secrets, left no witnesses, and replaced the truth with smoke. Tonight, though, even flames couldn’t burn fast enough.The mill was still collapsing behind her when she staggered into the night air, lungs clawing for breath. Concrete dust coated her hair and skin, turning her sweat into gritty paste. Somewhere deep inside, the explosion still echoed like thunder pressed against her ribcage.She didn’t look back. Looking back meant hesitation, and hesitation meant Elena would catch her.The enhanced daughter she no longer recognized.Maria forced her legs to keep moving across the broken terrain of the industrial district, every step a fight against the pain screaming through her body. Her right ankle throbbed where she’d landed hard against steel, and her shoulder was on fire from shrapnel.She could hear sirens now, distant but converging. Police, fire, maybe even federal agencie

Somewhere outside Cleveland, 04:11 a.m.POV: DanielThe safehouse was too quiet. Daniel never trusted quiet.He had grown up learning that silence in the streets meant trouble brewing behind closed doors—gangs waiting in alleys, cops preparing raids, old enemies watching from windows. Noise was honesty; silence was deceit.And yet here he was, in a farmhouse buried deep in Ohio countryside, the quiet pressing in like a second skin. Outside, wind scraped branches against the roof. Inside, his reflection stared back at him from the darkened kitchen window—older, sharper, and far more dangerous than the boy who once ran corners in Detroit.His comm unit buzzed. He answered without hesitation.“Status?” Harrington’s voice came low, clipped.“Still clean,” Daniel said, though his gut said otherwise. “How long you want me waiting here?”“Until we know who sent that message. Eastern Market, dawn. If it’s Lazarus bait, you’re our insurance. Stay dark, stay patient.”Daniel snorted. “Patience

Detroit, Eastern Market — 05:45 a.m.POV: MariaThe bullet left Maria’s gun like a heartbeat—swift, irreversible.It didn’t strike the emissary. It tore through the chest of the prototype lunging at Harrington, dropping the creature mid-air before its claws could shred him.Harrington stumbled back, alive, eyes locking on hers with something between gratitude and fury.“You had the shot!” he roared. “The emissary was wide open—”“And you were wide open too,” Maria snapped, chambering her last round. “I don’t leave people behind.”The emissary’s smile never faltered. “Touching. Predictable. Human.”The prototypes regrouped, forming a circle that tightened around their position. Each time Maria or Harrington cut one down, the soldier rose again, slower perhaps, but still moving.From the rooftops, Webb yelled over comms, voice raw with panic. “They’re learning! Every reset, they move faster—like they’re syncing to each other!”Maria’s blood chilled. The hive. It’s adapting in real time.