Rebuilding

The rain beat against the roof of the stolen Honda like shrapnel, but inside, the air was suddenly still. Sarah stared at the man standing by the open door of the black sedan. He had the same dark hair as Caleb. The same sharp jawline. But his eyes were different. Harder.

"Caleb's twin?" Sarah repeated, her voice barely a whisper over the sound of the storm.

"Not exactly," Jack said, holstering his badge but keeping one hand near his jacket. "More like a copy. But 'twin' is easier to explain on the paperwork."

Maya leaned forward from the passenger seat, her eyes wide. "Are you a clone?"

"I'm the first iteration," Jack said, his gaze flicking to the girl. "Before the Senator got involved. Before Elena started tweaking the recipe."

He looked back at Sarah.

"You need to get off the road. Argus isn't the only one tracking you. The local PD just put out an APB on this vehicle."

"Why should I trust you?" Sarah asked, her hand still gripping the gun in her bag. "You work for the government. The same government that protected Elena for thirty years."

"I work for the bureau," Jack corrected. "Specifically, a task force that didn't know the Vice President was harvesting children until two hours ago."

He gestured to his car.

"I can get you to Vermont. Safe. Fast. Or you can take your chances in a stolen Civic with a busted taillight."

Sarah looked at Maya. At the exhaustion etched into her young face. They were running on fumes, both literally and metaphorically.

"Does Caleb know about you?" Sarah asked.

"No," Jack said. "Elena separated us at birth. Sent me to a foster family in Ohio. I didn't know I was a Vance until I ran my own DNA through the database six months ago."

He took a step closer, the rain soaking his suit.

"I'm not here for a reunion, Sarah. I'm here for Rachel. She has something I need."

"The cure," Sarah said.

Jack's expression didn't change, but his posture stiffened. "So you know."

"She said she hid it in her DNA."

"Which makes her a walking target," Jack said. "If Elena gets her back, she won't just extract the cure. She'll vivisect her to find out how she made it."

Sarah made a decision. It was reckless. It was dangerous. But she was out of options.

"Okay," she said. "We'll go with you."

She got out of the Honda, pulling the manila envelope and the gun from her bag. She tucked the gun into her waistband, making sure Jack saw it.

"But if you try anything," she said, "I'll shoot you. And I won't aim for the shoulder."

Jack smiled, a quick, humorless quirk of his lips that looked disturbingly like Caleb's. "Understood."

They transferred to the sedan. It was warm, dry, and smelled of new leather. Maya fell asleep almost instantly in the backseat. Sarah sat up front, watching the road, watching Jack.

"You said you're looking for Rachel," Sarah said as they merged back onto the highway. "How do you know she's in Vermont?"

"I tracked the signal," Jack said.

"What signal?"

"The locket," he said. "It's not just jewelry. It's a transponder. Low frequency. Passive. Designed to be undetectable unless you know exactly what frequency to scan."

Sarah pulled the velvet pouch from her pocket. She opened it, looking at the silver locket. *R.E.V.*

"Elena tagged us," Sarah realized. "Like cattle."

"She likes to keep track of her inventory," Jack said grimly. "I cut mine out ten years ago. Found it under the skin of my arm."

He touched the scar on his cheek.

"But Rachel kept hers. Maybe she didn't know. Or maybe she wanted to be found."

They drove north, the city fading into the rolling hills of New Hampshire and then Vermont. The rain turned to snow as they climbed in elevation, a white curtain dropping over the world.

"What happens when we find her?" Sarah asked.

"I bring her in," Jack said. "Protective custody. We isolate the sequence. We synthesize the cure."

"And then?"

"And then we burn the original data," Jack said. "So no one can ever do this again."

Sarah looked at him. He sounded sincere. But she had learned the hard way that sincerity was just another mask.

"And what about the other... iterations?" she asked. "The girl in the tank at the clinic. The clone."

Jack's hands tightened on the wheel. The leather creaked.

"I burned the clinic," he said.

Sarah frowned. "No. Caleb burned the hangar. I was there."

"Caleb burned the hangar," Jack agreed. "I burned the basement. While you were arguing with Elena."

Sarah stared at him. "You were there?"

"I've been shadowing you since the courthouse," Jack said. "I saw you go in. I saw you come out."

"Why didn't you help us?"

"I did," Jack said. "I took out the sniper in the trees."

Sarah felt a chill go down her spine. A sniper. She hadn't even known.

"Elena had a contingency for everything," Jack said. "Even her own arrest. If the police took her, the sniper was supposed to take you out. Tie up the loose ends."

He glanced at her.

"You're welcome."

They crossed the state line into Vermont. The snow was heavier here, piling up on the sides of the road.

"We're close," Jack said, checking a GPS monitor on the dash. "Burlington. The storage unit."

"Two Rivers Storage," Sarah said, reading the receipt from the locket. "Unit 404."

"It's a trap," Jack said.

"Everything is a trap," Sarah said.

"No," Jack said. "I mean, it's too easy. A receipt in a safety deposit box? It's a breadcrumb trail. Rachel wants to be found, but she's not going to be sitting in a storage locker waiting for us."

"Then where is she?"

"She's watching the locker," Jack said. "Waiting to see who shows up."

He pulled the car off the highway, into the outskirts of Burlington. The storage facility was a row of orange metal doors behind a chain-link fence.

Jack parked a block away, behind a snowbank.

"Stay here," he said.

"No," Sarah said. "She won't talk to you. You're a fed. You're a man. You look like the brother she thinks is dead."

She opened the door.

"She needs to see me."

Jack hesitated, then nodded. He handed her an earpiece.

"Keep this in," he said. "If I say run, you run."

Sarah put the earpiece in. She walked toward the facility, the snow crunching under her boots.

The gate was locked, but the pedestrian door was propped open with a brick.

Sarah walked in. The rows of units were silent, covered in a thin layer of snow.

Unit 404 was halfway down the third row.

Sarah approached it. The lock was missing. The door was slightly ajar.

She pushed it up. The metal rattled loudly in the quiet air.

The unit was empty.

Except for a single chair in the center of the concrete floor.

And sitting on the chair was a laptop.

Sarah walked toward it. The screen was dark. She touched the trackpad.

A video window popped up.

*Live Feed.*

Sarah looked at the screen. It showed the interior of the storage unit. It showed her, standing there.

"Hello, Sarah," a voice said from the speakers.

It wasn't Rachel.

It was Elena.

Sarah spun around. But the unit was empty.

"I'm not there, darling," Elena's voice purred from the laptop. "I'm calling from a very secure, very private location. Thanks to my new friends in the federal government."

"You're in custody," Sarah said to the screen.

"Am I?" Elena laughed. "Or am I a valuable asset with information on a rogue geneticist?"

"Where is Rachel?" Sarah demanded.

"That's the question, isn't it?" Elena said. "I don't know. But I know you're going to find her for me."

The screen flickered. A map appeared. A GPS dot blinking in the mountains.

"She's heading for the border," Elena said. "Canada. If she crosses, we lose her. And the cure."

"I'm not helping you," Sarah said.

"Oh, I think you will," Elena said.

The image on the screen changed.

It wasn't a map anymore.

It was a live feed of the inside of Jack's car.

Maya was sleeping in the backseat.

But the driver's seat was empty.

And pressing a gun to Maya's head was a man in a tactical vest.

Argus.

"Jack isn't FBI, Sarah," Elena said softly. "He's my head of security."