During my 3-month ultrasound, I heard my husband tell the doctor, “Get rid of the baby and make sure she can never become a mother again.

The blinding flash of muzzle fire illuminated the grand hallway of the Sutherland estate in strobe-like bursts, casting long, frantic shadows against the priceless oil paintings that lined the walls. Reese Sutherland stood braced in the center of the corridor, her posture rigid as concrete, the heavy submachine gun bucking furiously against her shoulder. The recoil was violent, vibrating straight up through her collarbones and into her jaw, but she didn’t blink. Every fiber of her being was dialed into the glowing green phosphor of the night-vision headset. Through the tactical display, the three black-clad operatives looked like walking skeletons of heat and motion.

The lead mercenary staggered backward under a relentless wall of 9mm parabellum rounds, his tactical armor absorbing the initial impacts before failing completely. He dropped his weapon, clutched at his chest where a blossoming red stain was rapidly turning the thermal signature into a dull, muddy orange, and collapsed heavily onto the marble flooring. The remaining two operatives scrambled for cover, diving behind the thick mahogany pedestals that supported the estate’s antique marble busts.

"Suppressing fire! Flank right!" one of them barked through a scrambled, digitized voice modulator.

A hail of return fire chewed through the expensive wainscoting inches from Reese’s head, sending white-hot splinters flying into her hair and face. A sharp, stinging pain grazed her left cheekbone, but she felt no fear—only an icy, calcified fury. Calvin Mercer was down somewhere near the top of the stairs, bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. If Calvin died, the last line of defense before the nursery fell with him.

Reese didn’t wait for them to coordinate their pincer movement. Dropping low into a combat roll, she slid across the slick, rain-dampened runner rug toward the shelter of an alcove housing a towering grandfather clock. The glass face of the clock shattered into a thousand glittering shards as enemy rounds punched through the wood housing just a millisecond after her head cleared the space.

"Target is locked in the east alcove! Push her!" the second operative shouted, his boots splashing through tracking water and blood as he advanced.

Reese pulled a heavy stun grenade from the tactical belt of the dead mercenary lying at her feet, pulled the pin with her teeth, and tossed it blindly around the corner with a sharp underhand flick.

*Clatter. Clatter.*

"Flashbang!"

The blinding, magnesium-white detonation turned the hallway into a shrieking furnace of sensory overload. A deafening high-pitched whine filled the air, accompanied by an incandescent flash that even penetrated the night-vision goggles, temporarily blinding the charging mercenaries.

Reese didn’t hesitate. She stepped out of the alcove, her weapon raised, and systematically squeezed the trigger twice. *Pff-pff.* *Pff-pff.*

Both operatives dropped instantly, their bodies sliding limply down the floral wallpaper until they came to rest in tangled heaps of nylon and Kevlar. The hallway fell into a sudden, eerie silence, broken only by the steady drumbeat of the midnight rain lashing against the massive stained-glass windows overhead.

Breathing heavily through her nose, Reese ripped off the night-vision headset and sprinted toward the top of the main staircase. "Calvin!" she shouted, her voice cutting through the smoke and cordite haze.

There was a faint, ragged groan from the shadows near the balustrade. Reese dropped to her knees beside her head of security. Calvin Mercer was clutching his side, his fingers slick with dark, viscous blood that pumped out with every shallow heartbeat. His face was unnaturally pale, his lips tinted with a faint blue cyanosis.

"Miss... Sutherland..." Calvin whispered, his eyelids fluttering weakly. "The... the security grid... they bypassed the main server. Someone inside... someone gave them the biometric override codes..."

Reese’s heart skipped a beat, a cold terror gripping her throat far more potent than any weapon the mercenaries had carried. "Don't talk, Calvin. Save your strength. I'm getting you out of here."

"No... listen to me..." Calvin grabbed her wrist with surprising, desperate strength, his fingers digging into her skin. "It wasn't Preston... Preston is locked in ADX. This... this is the Syndicate... the Blood Orchid... they want the child's genetic key... You have to run, Reese... *now*."

Before Reese could answer, a loud, metallic grinding sound echoed from the far end of the East Wing—the sound of the reinforced emergency elevator grinding upward from the subterranean sub-levels. The private elevator that only Augustus Sutherland, Reese, and one other person knew how to access.

The doors slid open with a soft chime. Standing inside the pristine stainless-steel compartment, holding a silenced pistol aimed directly at Reese’s forehead, was a man wearing an impeccably tailored Brioni suit, his silver hair neatly combed, a warm, paternal smile plastered across his face.