Beyond the Ordinary

Chapter 5 – The Safehouse

The rain had softened to a whisper by the time the black sedan rolled into Georgetown. Midnight pressed against the windshield like fog. The city slept, unaware that three fugitives had just slipped through its veins.

Hale killed the headlights and coasted into an alley behind an old brick townhouse. The windows were dark, the air heavy with the smell of wet asphalt and gasoline.

Cross exited first, scanning the rooftops with a practiced glance before tapping a coded sequence on a rusted keypad hidden under a drainpipe. The door buzzed open. “Inside,” she ordered.

Gordon followed wordlessly, helping Hale limp through the narrow doorway. Inside was a cramped but secure space, reinforced walls, black-out curtains, a faint hum of hidden electronics. Maps, data drives, and scattered files covered a metal desk.

Hale collapsed into a chair, groaning. “Next time, can we pick a safehouse with a minibar?”

“You’re welcome to find your own,” Cross said dryly, locking the door behind them.

Gordon moved to the window, peering through a crack in the blinds. “They’ll track us here.”

“Not tonight,” Cross replied. “This place doesn’t exist on any registry. Even the Agency thinks it was decommissioned five years ago.”

Hale looked up. “Meaning you’ve been keeping secrets.”

“I’ve been keeping contingencies,” she said, removing her wet jacket. Her expression softened slightly as she turned to Gordon. “Sit down, Doctor. You look like death.”

He ignored the jab, pacing instead. His mind was a blur, the attack, the hybrid soldier, the woman on the monitor. You were designed that way. The words echoed, persistent as a heartbeat.

“Tell me what Project Lazarus is,” he said.

Cross hesitated, just long enough to confirm his suspicion. Hale’s eyes narrowed. “You know, don’t you?”

She sighed. “I know enough to be afraid of it.”

“Talk,” Gordon snapped. “No more riddles.”

Cross opened a secure file on her tablet, the screen glowing faintly in the dark room. “Project Lazarus was a classified bio-genetic initiative launched eighteen years ago, part of an experimental medical defense program.

The goal was to accelerate human healing. Tissue regeneration, neural restoration, cellular resilience, the kind of things science only dreams about.”

“And?” Hale asked.

“And,” she continued, “the program failed. Every subject died during Phase Three testing. Every one except one.” She looked directly at Gordon.

He felt the ground tilt beneath him. “You’re saying”

“You were Subject Zero,” Cross said. “The prototype.”

The air went still. Gordon’s voice was barely audible. “That’s impossible. My parents weren’t scientists. They were teachers.”

“Adoptive,” Cross corrected quietly. “The real Andersons were part of the research team. They died when the lab went dark.”

Hale leaned forward. “Why bury it? Why keep him alive?”

Cross’s expression darkened. “Because his existence was evidence of a miracle, or a crime. Depends on which side you ask.”

Gordon sank into a chair, hands shaking. “You’re telling me I’m a lab experiment wearing a name tag.”

“You’re human,” she said, firm but not unkind. “Just… altered. They used a regenerative serum derived from” She hesitated. “From an unidentified biological source. Something not found on Earth.”

Hale frowned. “You mean alien?”

Cross shook her head. “Extraterrestrial is the word used in the reports, but there’s no confirmation. Whatever it was, it rewrote his cells. That’s what gives him the ability to heal, and the cost that comes with it.”

Gordon stared at his palms. The faint blue shimmer pulsed once beneath his skin, then faded. “So every time I save someone, I’m burning through what’s left of this… altered biology.”

“Exactly,” Cross said. “The gene is unstable. It regenerates others by consuming itself. Eventually, it will stop replenishing.”

“Meaning what?” Hale asked.

“Meaning he’ll die,” she said bluntly. “The more he uses it, the faster the clock runs out.”

A heavy silence settled over them. The only sound was the rain dripping from the gutter outside. Finally, Gordon spoke. “That woman who contacted us, the one from the feed. She said there were others.”

Cross nodded slowly. “Then she’s lying. All records show you were the only survivor.”

Hale rubbed his jaw. “Unless the records were falsified.”

Cross shot him a look. “You’re implying”

“I’m implying we just got ambushed by a half-machine assassin calling himself Prototype Alpha,” Hale said. “So either you’re missing a few files, or someone decided to keep the experiment running.”

Gordon’s voice was cold. “Where would they do it?”

Cross hesitated. “There were secondary labs. One in Nevada, decommissioned after the first failure. Another overseas, in Zurich.”

“Then that’s where we start,” Hale said, rising.

Cross stepped in front of him. “You’re not cleared to move. We don’t even know who we’re up against.”

Gordon stood too. “That’s exactly why we move. Whoever sent Alpha knew about me. They’ll come again. I’m not waiting here for another explosion.”

Cross studied him for a long moment. “You’re reckless.”

“I’m alive,” he said. “That’s more than most of your agents tonight.”

Hale suppressed a grin. “He’s got a point.”

Cross exhaled, then reached into her coat and tossed Hale a key fob. “There’s a private airstrip outside Arlington. No flight logs, no manifests. Take it. But if anyone asks, this conversation never happened.”

“Understood,” Hale said.

Gordon paused at the door. “Why help us?”

Cross’s gaze softened, just barely. “Because I saw you touch death and bring it back breathing. I don’t know if that makes you divine or damned. But if Lazarus is still active, it won’t stop with you.”

Gordon nodded once, then stepped into the night with Hale. As the door closed behind them, Cross returned to her desk and opened a hidden file.

A series of encrypted images appeared, each tagged with a different name: Subject 002… Subject 003… Subject 004.

She stared at the final one, a young woman with silver irises and a faint scar across her cheek. The status line beneath her photo blinked in red: Subject 005 – Missing.

Cross whispered to herself, “God help them all.”

Outside, the storm had eased, but the air still carried the weight of something waiting, something that knew Gordon Anderson was awake, moving, and finally asking the right questions.

And across the ocean, in a dimly lit Zurich laboratory, a figure floated in a suspension tank, eyes opening for the first time. The hunt had begun.