Chapter 2 - The Handprint
The SUV never slowed.
Alexander stared at the speaker grille as if Marcus might crawl through it and explain the impossible.
"My biometric system requires palm geometry, pulse, and heat," he said.
"I know."
"Then say what you're thinking."
Marcus's silence did it for him.
Emma shifted Grace higher against her shoulder. The baby's breath warmed the wet fabric of her hoodie.
"A copy," Emma said.
Alexander looked at her.
"Of your hand."
Vale's SUV pulled alongside them before turning down a service ramp. Marcus directed both vehicles into an underground garage beneath a private medical building in Streeterville.
No signs. No lobby. No valet.
Only steel doors and cameras hidden behind smoked glass.
Dr. Vale met them inside.
"This clinic doesn't exist on paper," he said.
"Everything exists on paper," Alexander replied.
"Not if your company paid to erase it."
The words stopped him cold.
Evelyn stood ten feet away, soaked hair clinging to her cheeks. She looked thinner than the woman in the locket photograph. Older too, though only months had passed.
She kept looking at the twins without touching them.
Emma finally asked, "Why won't you hold them?"
Evelyn's mouth trembled.
"Because the last time I did, someone took them away."
Vale led them through a hall painted the dull beige of every hospital nobody remembers. Inside a procedure room, he cleaned Alexander's cut and checked his ribs.
No fractures.
The babies were examined next.
Healthy.
Approximately six weeks old.
That number became a weapon in the room.
Alexander stared at Evelyn.
"The photograph. Seven months ago."
"The babies in that photograph weren't these babies."
Emma felt the back of her neck tighten.
Evelyn sat down.
"They were embryos carried to twenty-four weeks in an artificial gestation trial. They were removed before viability and placed into developmental suspension."
Alexander laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
"No."
Vale handed him a tablet.
On the screen was a Harrison International research subsidiary Emma had never heard of: Argent BioSystems.
Alexander had.
His face told her before he spoke.
"We sold Argent three years ago."
"You sold the public company," Evelyn said. "You kept the patents."
Alexander scanned the files.
Artificial placental support.
Neonatal oxygenation.
Genetic disease prevention.
Cryogenic developmental pause.
His thumb stopped moving.
"These approvals have my signature."
"They used your hand," Emma said.
Everyone looked at her.
She wished they wouldn't.
She had only meant it as a connection.
But Vale's expression sharpened.
"That's why he was attacked tonight. Not to kill him. To take what they needed."
Alexander remembered then.
A broken windshield. His car spinning under the rain. Someone opening his door while he was dazed. A pressure against his left palm.
Cold gel.
A flash of blue light.
He lifted his hand.
There was a faint rectangle of irritated skin below his thumb.
Evelyn closed her eyes.
"They cloned your live biometric response."
Emma looked at the babies.
"Who is they?"
Evelyn answered with one name.
"The Continuance Project."
Alexander knew the phrase.
It had been his father's.
Richard Harrison believed wealth should not merely pass to children. It should outlive weakness, scandal, illness, even death. He had funded longevity labs, embryo screening, private data vaults.
Alexander had shut most of it down after taking control of the company.
At least he thought he had.
A soft sound came from the hallway.
Ding. Ding-ding. Ding.
Evelyn stood so fast the chair scraped backward.
Vale killed the lights.
"No one move."
The melody came again.
Closer.
Emma's palms went damp.
Marcus stepped into the hall with two guards.
The clinic's emergency lights glowed red.
Then a woman's voice came over the intercom.
Calm.
Pleasant.
Almost maternal.
"Mr. Harrison, please place the children in the corridor."
Alexander rose.
The voice continued.
"You may keep the girl who found them."
Emma stopped breathing.
A small monitor on the wall flickered on.
Security camera footage appeared.
It showed Emma's apartment building.
Her mother, Rebecca Carter, was just stepping through the front door carrying grocery bags.
A man in a dark coat entered behind her.
Emma dropped to her feet.
"Mom."
On the screen, the lobby camera went black.
Then the four-note melody played through the intercom one more time.
Ding. Ding-ding. Ding.
Alexander looked at Emma.
For the first time that night, he saw not a witness.
May you like
He saw leverage.
And someone had just used her.
