The ventilation grate above my cot moved.
Just a fraction of an inch, but enough to catch my attention in the dim emergency lighting. I'd been lying awake for three hours since returning from Kane's lab, the stolen data chip burning like a coal in my pocket, my mind racing through impossible escape scenarios.
A soft scraping sound came from the ceiling. Metal against metal, careful and controlled.
I rolled silently to the floor, pressing my back against the wall where I could see both the door and the air vent. My muscles coiled, ready to fight or flee, though both options seemed equally hopeless in a facility designed to contain people like me.
The grate shifted again, then dropped silently onto my bed. A figure in black tactical gear descended through the opening with spider-like grace, moving without sound until her boots touched the floor.
Elena Cross straightened up and brushed dust off her shoulders, looking remarkably calm for someone who'd just broken into the most secure facility in New Los Angeles.
"Well," she said quietly, "you're either the world's lightest sleeper or you were expecting me."
I stayed against the wall, every sense alert for danger. "How did you get in here?"
Elena smiled, pulling off black gloves to reveal hands that were calloused and scarred like a fighter's. "Same way you got into Kane's lab tonight. The difference is, I've been planning this for months."
My blood went cold. She knew about the break-in.
"Relax," Elena said, reading my expression. "Your secret's safe. For now."
She moved to my small desk, her movements casual but purposeful. Everything about her radiated controlled competence—from the way she checked sight lines to the door to how her hand never strayed far from the pistol at her hip.
"We need to talk," she said.
"About what?"
"About the fact that you're scheduled for termination in forty-eight hours." Elena sat on the desk chair, making herself comfortable like she owned the place. "About Project Genesis and what Kane really has planned for you. About why I've been watching this facility for the better part of a year."
I moved away from the wall but kept my distance. "You're with the families."
"I work for them. There's a difference." Elena's green eyes never left my face. "Though lately, that distinction is becoming more important."
She pulled out a small device—some kind of scanner or signal jammer—and activated it. A soft hum filled the air, and the red light on my room's surveillance camera went dark.
"That'll give us maybe ten minutes before security notices the dead signal," Elena said. "So let's make this quick."
"Make what quick?"
Elena leaned forward, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "The part where I offer to get you out of here. Tonight."
Hope flared in my chest, so sudden and fierce it took my breath away. Then reality crashed back down.
"What's the catch?"
"Smart girl." Elena's smile was sharp, predatory. "The catch is that I need something from you first. Consider it payment for services rendered."
I crossed my arms, trying to look more confident than I felt. "What kind of payment?"
"The kind you're exceptionally good at." Elena stood and moved to the small window, checking the corridor outside. "I need someone eliminated. Someone with excellent security, paranoid habits, and the kind of protection that makes assassination... challenging."
"Someone from the families."
"Someone who's been making problems for people I care about." Elena's voice carried an edge now, cold and sharp as winter steel. "Someone who needs to die before he can cause more damage."
I thought about Marcus and Maya, somewhere out there in the underground city, trusting Elena to keep them safe. About the data chip in my pocket and Kane's plans for a Genesis army. About the fact that I was supposed to die in less than twelve hours anyway.
"Who?" I asked.
Elena turned from the window, her expression serious. "Vincent Moreau. Shadow family councilman, Level 15 penthouse. He's been coordinating a campaign to eliminate mixed-bloods throughout the territory. Concentration camps, mass sterilization, genetic 'purity' programs."
My chest tightened. "Like ethnic cleansing."
"Exactly like that." Elena's jaw was set, her hands clenched into fists. "Three hundred mixed-bloods have disappeared in the last month. Children, mostly. They're being held in facilities that make this place look like a resort."
The idea of children in cages, scared and alone, made something violent uncoil in my stomach. But I forced myself to think strategically.
"Why can't you kill him yourself?"
"Because I'm not genetically engineered to be the perfect assassin." Elena moved back to the chair, her movements sharp with suppressed anger. "Moreau's paranoid as hell. Telepathic early warning systems, pre-cognitive bodyguards, the works. He surrounds himself with people who can see trouble coming from miles away."
"But I can get close to him."
"Your Mind family genetic modifications make you invisible to telepathic scanning. Your Void heritage lets you suppress supernatural abilities in your immediate vicinity. You're literally the only person who could walk right up to him and put a bullet in his head."
Elena was right. I'd been designed to counter every possible supernatural defense. But something about this felt wrong, too convenient.
"How do you know so much about my capabilities?"
Elena was quiet for a long moment, studying my face like she was making some kind of decision.
"Because I helped design them," she said finally.
The words hit me like a physical blow. "What?"
"Not the genetics—that was Kane's specialty. But the tactical programming, the mission parameters, the psychological conditioning protocols." Elena's voice was steady, but I could see shame in her green eyes. "I consulted on the Genesis project for eight months, back when they were developing the early iterations."
My hands curled into fists. "You helped make me."
"I helped make you into a weapon, yes. But I also tried to make you into something more." Elena stood, moving closer despite the danger radiating from every line of my body. "The empathy protocols, the moral reasoning subroutines, the capacity for emotional growth—those were my contributions."
"You're the reason I'm defective."
"I'm the reason you're human." Elena's voice was fierce now, passionate. "Kane wanted to create mindless killing machines. I convinced him that autonomous moral judgment would make Genesis subjects more effective in complex situations."
She laughed, a sound with no humor in it.
"Turns out I was right. Just not in the way any of us expected."
I stared at her, processing this revelation. Elena wasn't just someone who'd observed my awakening—she'd engineered it. The capacity for love, for mercy, for choosing to save Marcus and Maya instead of following orders—all of that came from her design modifications.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I knew what it felt like to be disposable." Elena's hand moved unconsciously to the scar on her cheek. "Mixed-blood, remember? Cast out by my family, used by others, always one mistake away from termination. I couldn't give you a different life, but I could give you the tools to choose your own path."
"And now you want to use those tools to commit murder."
"I want to use those tools to save lives." Elena's eyes blazed with conviction. "Every day Moreau stays alive, more mixed-blood children disappear. More families are torn apart. More innocent people die."
She had a point. But something still felt off about this whole situation.
"How did you know I'd break into Kane's lab tonight?"
Elena smiled grimly. "Because you're exactly as smart as I programmed you to be. You were always going to figure out that something was wrong, always going to go looking for answers. I just had to wait for the right moment to make contact."
"So this whole thing is manipulation. Another layer of programming."
"This whole thing is a choice." Elena moved closer, her voice urgent. "In twelve hours, Kane is going to strap you to that chair and fry your brain until there's nothing left but obedience. Unless you come with me right now."
Twelve hours. Not forty-eight like she'd originally said.
"Your intelligence is outdated," I said. "They moved up the schedule. I'm supposed to die at oh-eight-hundred, right after I kill you."
Elena's face went white. "What?"
I pulled out the data chip, holding it up so she could see it. "I found Kane's files. You're my final target. They're going to have me assassinate you this morning, then activate the kill switch immediately afterward."
Elena stared at the chip like it was a live grenade. "That's... not possible. My contacts in the families said—"
"Your contacts lied. Or they don't know the real timeline." I tucked the chip back into my pocket. "Either way, we're both dead if we stay here."
Elena ran her hands through her red hair, her composure finally cracking. "Shit. Shit, this changes everything."
"Does it change your offer?"
She looked up at me, surprise flickering across her features. "You're still willing to trust me? After everything I just told you?"
I thought about it. Elena had helped create me, manipulated me, lied to me about the timeline. She was asking me to commit murder in exchange for freedom that might not even be real.
But she'd also given me the capacity for compassion. She'd tried to save Marcus and Maya when she could have ignored them. And right now, she was the only person offering me a choice other than death or mindless obedience.
"Do I have better options?" I asked.
Elena's smile was grim but genuine. "Not really."
"Then yes. I'll kill Moreau for you. But I want more than just an escape route."
"What do you want?"
I met her eyes steadily. "I want you to help me destroy Genesis Labs. All of it. Kane, his research, his plans for Phase Two—everything."
Elena's eyebrows rose. "Phase Two?"
"Mass production. They're planning to build an army of Genesis soldiers without the emotional 'defects.' Unless we stop them."
For a moment, Elena was completely still, processing the implications. Then her expression hardened into something that reminded me why she'd survived as a mixed-blood in a pure-blood world.
"Deal," she said. "But we do this my way, on my timeline. And if you try to double-cross me..."
"You'll kill me?"
"I'll let Kane have you back."
The threat hung in the air between us, sharp and final. But underneath it, I sensed something else. Hope, maybe. Or desperation. Elena needed me as much as I needed her.
"So," I said. "How do we get out of here?"
Elena moved back to the ventilation grate, checking her equipment. "Same way I got in. Though it's going to be a tighter fit with two people."
"And then?"
"Then we pay Vincent Moreau a visit. Early morning raids are so much more effective when the target is still in bed."
Elena boosted herself up toward the ceiling, then reached down to help me follow. As her hand closed around mine, I felt something I hadn't experienced since the memory fragments of that unnamed woman singing lullabies.
Trust. Fragile, dangerous, probably stupid—but real.
"Elena," I said as she pulled me up into the darkness of the ventilation shaft.
"Yeah?"
"When this is over, when Moreau is dead and Genesis is destroyed—what happens to me then?"
Elena paused in the cramped metal space, her face barely visible in the dim emergency lighting.
"Then you get to find out what it means to be free," she said.
"And if I don't like what I find?"
Elena's smile was sad, understanding, and completely human.
"Then you get to choose something different. That's what freedom means, Null. The right to make your own mistakes."
We crawled through the darkness toward an uncertain future, toward violence and betrayal and choices that would define who I really was beneath Kane's programming.
But for the first time since my awakening began, I wasn't afraid.
I was ready.
End of Chapter 6