Chapter 17 - The Architect of Eden
Harrison ripped the envelope open, his hands shaking so violently the paper tore in jagged strips.
He stared at the genetic readouts. The probability of maternal lineage between Maya Vance and Evelyn Cross Vance was zero percent.
"How?" Harrison gasped, the room spinning around him. "I watched Evelyn carry Maya! I went to every ultrasound! I was in the delivery room! I cut the umbilical cord!"
"You watched Evelyn carry a prosthetic incubator," Marcus revealed, his voice shaking with righteous fury. "A bio-synthetic womb engineered by Vivienne. Maya wasn't conceived naturally, Harrison. She was gene-edited in a lab. Her biological mother was an anonymous donor selected for specific neurological traits. Maya has an altered genetic sequence—an expanded neocortex, total immunity to viral pathogens, and hyper-accelerated cognitive retention."
Marcus leaned forward, pointing at a line of code at the bottom of the DNA report:
*PATENT DESIGNATION: EDEN-01.*
"You didn't have a daughter, Harrison," Marcus whispered. "In their eyes, you were just the billionaire bank account financing the world’s first patented human prototype. And Maya is the prototype."
Harrison looked over at Maya. She looked so tiny, so frail beneath the wool blanket, her thumb resting inches from her mouth, her soft curls spilling over the cushion.
All the memories of her childhood—her laughter when he tossed her in the pool, the way she hid behind his legs when thunderstorms rolled over Manhattan, her tearful pleas for him to read her bedtime stories—rushed through his mind.
He didn't care about patents. He didn't care about DNA codes or synthetic incubators.
She was his daughter. She had looked at him with Evelyn’s eyes and called him *Daddy*. He had wiped her tears. He had sworn an oath before God to protect her with his life.
"They want her back," Harrison said, his voice dropping into an icy, unshakeable calm. The panic was gone. The confusion had evaporated. In its place was a lethal, crystalline focus that had built an empire from nothing.
"Evelyn needs Maya’s bone marrow," Marcus said grimly. "The gene-editing sequence Vivienne used had a fatal flaw. It requires regular enzymatic infusions derived from Maya’s living tissue to stabilize. Without Maya, the synthetic enhancements Evelyn used on her own body will collapse. Evelyn is dying, Harrison. That’s why she resurfaced."
Suddenly, the red emergency lights in the cellar safe room flickered and died.
Total darkness swallowed the room.
The hum of the backup diesel generator on the surface sputtered, coughed, and went dead.
Silence descended upon the mountain lodge—a thick, suffocating silence broken only by the howling blizzard outside.
Then, through the ventilation shaft above Harrison’s head, a soft, familiar music box melody began to play.
May you like
It was *Clair de Lune*. The exact lullaby Evelyn used to hum as she put Maya to sleep.
***
