Chapter 18 - Five Minutes to MidnightThe countdown dropped.
04:32.
04:31.
We ran.
The underground hospital shook around us.
Dust fell.
Pipes burst.
Emergency lights flashed.
Alessandro carried the newborn.
I carried Maya.
Eve followed.
Isabella appeared from a side corridor.
She was bleeding.
“Where were you?”
“Getting this.”
She held up a hard drive.
“The archive.”
My husband was nowhere.
Neither was Dr. Vale.
We kept moving.
03:48.
At the stairwell, a door slammed open.
Men in black.
Alessandro fired.
Eve grabbed me.
“Down!”
Bullets hit the railing.
We reached the surface.
The hospital lobby was chaos.
Patients were being evacuated.
Police flooded the building.
News cameras waited outside.
Nobody knew what was happening underground.
Then the building shook.
A massive explosion erupted beneath the floor.
Windows shattered.
Everyone screamed.
I fell.
Maya slipped from my arms.
A stranger caught her.
I screamed:
“MAYA!”
The stranger turned.
It was my husband.
He smiled.
Then disappeared into the crowd.
I ran after him.
Alessandro grabbed my arm.
“Wait!”
“She has my daughter!”
He pointed.
“No.”
“What?”
He showed me the baby.
Maya.
Safe.
In his arms.
I stared.
My husband had taken the wrong child.
The newborn.
Not Maya.
He had kidnapped Project M-2.
I looked toward the smoke.
He had wanted that baby.
Not my daughter.
“That child is the weapon,” Isabella whispered.
“What weapon?”
“The cure.”
I turned.
A black van raced away.
Alessandro ran toward an SUV.
“Get in.”
We followed.
The chase began through Rome.
Rain hit the windshield.
Maya woke in my lap.
“Mommy.”
“I'm here.”
“Baby.”
“Yes.”
She looked toward the van.
“Bad man.”
“Who?”
“Daddy.”
I looked at her.
“Your father?”
She shook her head.
“Other Daddy.”
Again.
That phrase.
I finally understood.
Alessandro.
Maya wasn't warning me about my husband.
She was warning me about Alessandro.
I looked at him through the windshield.
He was driving.
His face was unreadable.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
A voice came through.
“Alessandro.”
He froze.
“Who is this?”
The voice replied:
“Your daughter.”
His hands tightened around the wheel.
“What?”
“Open the trunk.”
The call ended.
Everyone stared.
Alessandro pulled over.
He stepped out.
Opened the trunk.
Inside was a woman.
Alive.
Bound.
Isabella screamed.
“No.”
It was her.
The woman in the trunk looked exactly like Isabella.
But younger.
Terrified.
Alessandro stared.
“Who are you?”
The woman whispered:
“I am the real Isabella.”
I looked at the woman beside me.
She began to cry.
Then the woman in the trunk said:
“And the woman you've been calling my wife…”
May you like
She pointed toward the passenger seat.
“…is the woman who killed me.”
