Chapter 7 - The Safe House and the Ally
The agonizing synchronization was abruptly severed by the deafening roar of a shotgun blast.
The glass French doors behind Chloe shattered inward. Chloe lunged backward with unnatural, machine-like reflexes as pellets tore through the designer furniture. A figure clad in a drenched canvas coat stepped through the ruined threshold, racking another round into the twelve-gauge shotgun.
"Samantha, get up! Move!" a gruff voice barked.
It was Marcus Kane—their father’s former chief hardware architect, a man who had vanished abruptly after resigning from Vance NeuroTech four years ago.
Samantha scrambled across the glass-strewn hardwood floor. Chloe recovered instantly, pulling a compact ceramic pistol from her robe with chilling calm, but Marcus fired another suppressive shot, splintering the archway above her head. He grabbed Samantha by her collar, dragging her backward into the stormy darkness of the estate's courtyard.
They tumbled into an old, rusted SUV parked in the service alley, its engine idling. Marcus slammed the transmission into drive, tires screeching against wet gravel as they tore out onto the highway, leaving Chloe standing amidst the wreckage, watching them vanish with an expression of cold calculation.
Marcus threw a foil-lined tactical helmet into Samantha's lap. "Put that on. It’s an improvised Faraday cage. It will scramble the short-range microwave broadcast Chloe is using to trigger your father’s neural upload."
Samantha shoved the helmet over her bruised skull. Immediately, the static in her vision diminished to a faint, tolerable grain, and the ghostly voice of Arthur Vance fell into an unintelligible whisper.
"How long have you known about this, Marcus?" Samantha sobbed, gasping for air against the leather seat.
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"Since Arthur realized he was dying," Marcus replied, his eyes fixed grimly on the rain-swept highway. "Your father never saw his daughters as children, Samantha. You and Chloe were bred as backup hard drives."
***
