Three nurses at my hospital became pregnant after caring for the same man—a patient who had supposedly been in a coma for nearly ten years. At first, I told myself it had to be coincidence. Then one night, I stood beside his bed, whispered, “Marcus, can you hear me?” and watched the face of an unconscious man almost smile.

The rain had turned into a slashing sleet by midnight.

I sat in the back booth of the *Golden Waffle*, a twenty-four-hour diner tucked beneath the rattling steel girders of the 'L' train on Chicago’s South Side. The neon sign in the window flickered a sickly orange, humming in time with the passing trains.

Across from me sat Emily Rhodes.

She was twenty-eight, her face drawn, her blonde hair tucked beneath a thick knit beanie. She wore an oversized winter parka, zipped all the way to her chin, but the fabric couldn't hide the heavy stroller parked in the booth beside her.

Inside the stroller, a nine-month-old girl slept under a pink thermal blanket.

Her name was Maya.

Emily hadn't touched the black coffee cooling in front of her. Her hands were buried deep in the pockets of her coat, her knee bouncing in a relentless, panicked rhythm.

“You shouldn't have called me, Adrian,” she said, her voice shaking. “They watch my phone. They monitor my credit card transactions.”

“Nobody followed me, Emily,” I said gently. “I ditched my car in a parking garage in Loop and took the blue line. I need the truth. I need everything before tomorrow morning.”

Emily let out a dry, ragged sob. She reached out with trembling fingers and brushed a strand of dark hair from her daughter’s forehead.

Even in the dim, yellow light of the diner, the child’s features were unmistakable. The high, prominent brow. The sharp, elegant jawline.

And when Maya stirred, opening her eyes for a brief moment before settling back to sleep, I saw them.

The gray-blue eyes. The exact same shade as Julian Mercer’s.

“Did he threaten you?” I asked.

“At first,” Emily whispered, staring at the table. “When I realized he wasn't in a coma... I tried to run. I went to Vance. Vance sat me down in that office of his and showed me a video. It was a live feed of my parents' house in Naperville. A man was sitting in a car outside their driveway with a rifle on his lap.”

She swallowed, the memory making her physically shiver.

“Vance told me I had two choices. I could be a martyr and watch my family die, or I could become part of something that would change the world. He called it the *Prometheus Protocol*.”

“And Mercer?”

“Mercer is... a demon, Adrian,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “He doesn't talk like a criminal. He talks like a god. He spent hours talking to me in that room. He explained the genetics. He showed me the research papers he had published under pseudonyms in European journals. He made me feel... chosen. Special. He has this way of looking at you, like you’re the only person in the universe who matters.”

“That’s grooming, Emily,” I said firmly. “He’s a clinical psychopath.”

“I know!” she cried, then quickly lowered her voice as a waitress glanced our way. “I know what it was. But when Maya was born... I couldn't do it. The contract said I had to give her up at twelve months. They have a residential compound in Switzerland. A private academy where his children are raised by private tutors, neuroscientists, and pediatric specialists. They’re being groomed to inherit his companies.”

“You have three months left,” I said.

“I’m not giving her to him,” Emily hissed, her voice suddenly fierce with maternal fury. She leaned over the table, her knuckles white. “I would rather blow St. David’s to the ground than let that monster take my baby. But I can't fight them alone! Vance has the police in his pocket. The private security team on the night shift—they aren't hospital guards, Adrian. They’re ex-Blackwater mercenaries hired through a shell company called *Aegis Tactical*.”

My blood ran cold. “The entire night shift security?”

“All of them. Why do you think the cameras outside 208 were always ‘malfunctioning’? They control the mainframe. They control the elevators.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a small, encrypted USB flash drive. She slid it across the sticky laminate table toward me.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Emily Rhodes’s life insurance,” she said. “Before I left on maternity leave, I copied the encrypted biometric logs from the mainframe in the basement. It contains the real medical profiles of all seven children. The mothers’ names. The birth dates. The wire transfer receipts from Mercer’s Swiss accounts to Director Vance’s shell corporations.”

I picked up the drive. It felt heavy in my palm, like a loaded weapon.

“Where is Lila?” I asked.

Emily looked at me, her face pale with grief.

“Lila didn't make it to the safehouse,” Emily whispered.

My heart stopped. “What do you mean?”

“She called me four hours ago from a payphone near the lake,” Emily said, tears finally spilling uncontrollably down her cheeks. “She said Vance’s men caught her leaving her apartment. They brought her back to the hospital, Adrian. They’re holding her in the sub-basement. They’re going to induce labor tonight.”

“She’s only thirty-two weeks along!” I shouted, half-rising from the booth.

“They don't care!” Emily sobbed. “Mercer is leaving tomorrow. He’s taking the final baby with him. If the baby doesn't survive the extraction, he’ll discard it like bio-waste. You have to save her, Adrian. Please. You’re the only one who can get into that basement.”

Suddenly, the headlights of a black SUV swept across the diner’s front window.

The vehicle idled at the curb, its heavily tinted windows reflecting the flickering neon lights.

Emily froze.

“They found us,” she gasped, her voice choking on terror.