The rain had softened to a drizzle by the time Adrian parked the SUV beneath a collapsed overpass. The engine ticked quietly, cooling. Around them stretched a desolate industrial district — rusted warehouses, broken cranes, puddles reflecting bruised clouds.
Lena stirred awake in the passenger seat, the faint light under her skin dimmed now, almost gone. "Where are we?"
"East Sector," Adrian said. "No cameras. No Erevos patrols. We'll rest here for a few hours."
Her head rested back against the seat, eyes half-closed. "You said something before… about your father. That Erevos killed him."
Adrian stared through the cracked windshield, jaw tight. "He used to say some things weren't meant to be discovered. I thought he was talking about nuclear research, not… this."
He gestured vaguely toward her, toward the unseen life beneath her ribs.
For a moment, neither spoke. The storm outside whispered against the glass, a rhythm that somehow matched the pulse between them — steady, fragile.
Lena broke the silence first. "I never wanted this, Adrian. I just wanted to finish my work, to do something good."
He looked at her, his eyes dark and searching. "Then why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you would have tried to stop me," she whispered. "And you were already running from your father's ghost."
He didn't argue. She was right. Back then, everything he'd touched seemed to break — his family, his career, and finally her.
He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a flash drive. "Before we left, I copied your father's encrypted logs," he said. "There's something you need to see."
He plugged it into the dashboard console. A projection flickered to life on the cracked windshield — video feeds, research notes, genetic models twisting in three-dimensional code.
In one folder labeled "Erevos Lineage Project," they found a series of names, each with a blood sample ID.
Adrian froze when he saw the first one.
Richard Cole – Donor Sequence A.
Then another beneath it.
Adrian Cole – Sequence B.
Lena's pulse jumped. "They used your DNA?"
His throat went dry. "No. They couldn't have—"
He scrolled further. There it was again. Sequence B — matched with Subject Alpha.
The implication hit like a punch.
Lena's voice barely rose above a whisper. "That means the child isn't just mine."
Adrian leaned back, staring at the rain. "It's ours. By design."
The silence that followed was heavy, electric.
She touched her stomach, eyes glimmering. "They planned this before we even met."
"Maybe they didn't plan us," he said quietly. "But they used what we gave them."
Outside, a flash of lightning illuminated the broken cityscape. For a heartbeat, it looked alive again — like the world before all of this.
Lena turned toward him. "If Erevos created this from your bloodline, then you're the key to stopping it. Or continuing it."
He let out a bitter laugh. "So either I destroy what's left of my father's work, or I destroy my own child."
Her voice softened. "Don't say that."
"What else can I call it?" Adrian whispered. "They turned our lives into an equation."
The thunder rolled above them, low and distant.
Then Lena's breath caught. A tremor ran through her body — sharp, involuntary.
Adrian reached for her. "Lena?"
Her hand clutched the dashboard, veins flashing bright beneath her skin. The light that had faded before now returned, stronger, racing up her neck and into her eyes.
"I can hear them," she whispered. "Voices. So many…"
"Lena, stay with me!"
She gasped, chest rising sharply. "It's in my blood — in yours too. They're connected, Adrian. Through the child."
He held her shoulders, grounding her as her body shuddered. "Listen to me. Focus on my voice."
Slowly, the glow began to dim, her breathing evening out. Sweat glistened on her forehead, her pulse wild beneath his fingers.
When she finally looked at him again, her eyes had changed — a faint silver shimmer around the pupils.
Adrian felt something cold settle in his chest. "They didn't just use your DNA. They altered it."
Lena blinked, her voice unsteady. "I'm not the same, am I?"
He shook his head. "No. But you're still you. And I'm going to keep it that way."
For a long time, they sat in the silence that followed, the only sound the rain and the faint hum from the SUV's systems.
Lena finally whispered, "When this is over, and if we survive… will you still look at me like you do now?"
Adrian turned toward her, his expression unreadable. "Like what?"
"Like I'm still worth saving."
He reached out, brushing his thumb lightly over her knuckles. "You are. You always were."
Something unspoken passed between them then — a fragile truth too heavy for words.
A faint ping broke the moment. The dashboard lit up with a blinking red dot — a signal.
Adrian frowned. "Impossible. I shut every tracker down."
Lena leaned closer. "What is it?"
He opened the feed. A single encrypted message appeared:
> FROM: Victor Dane
LOCATION PING: Ridge Point Safehouse
MESSAGE: "You have three hours. Then they come for the child."
Lena's pulse quickened. "It's a trap."
Adrian started the engine. "Maybe. But it's our only lead."
As the SUV roared back to life, the reflection in the rearview mirror caught his eyes — faintly glowing, just like hers.
Neither of them spoke. But both understood the same thing.
Whatever Erevos had done, it was already inside them both.
And it was waking up.