HER STEPMOTHER THREW A 3-YEAR-OLD GIRL OFF A PRIVATE ISLAND INTO THE OCEAN! Her father jumped into the raging waves to save her, but when they reached shore, the little girl pointed at a fleeing speedboat and whispered something that made his blood run cold. What she revealed next exposed a terrifying secret about her dead mother! / Chapter 75 / 80

Chapter 75 - The Sovereign Twins Unleashed

The ascent into the belly of the beast was an exercise in pure survival.

Using the heavy-duty magnetic winch attached to an abandoned cargo sling, Daniel strapped Lily securely to his chest with tactical webbing, wrapped his arm around Claire, and fired the tether directly into the dreadnought’s exposed umbilical bay. The steel cable reeled in with blinding speed, pulling them out of the sinking submarine just as the vessel slipped beneath the black waves, vanishing into the abyss forever.

They breached the dreadnought’s hangar deck through an exhaust vent, tumbling onto the polished, industrial-grade steel floor.

The interior of Sarah Vance’s flagship was not a military vessel—it was a floating temple of scientific blasphemy.

Vast, vaulted corridors of black titanium stretched in every direction, lined with thousands of illuminated glass cylindrical tanks. Inside each tank floated a humanoid figure, suspended in glowing emerald amniotic fluid. Men, women, children—hundreds of clones of Daniel, of Claire, and worst of all, dozens of variations of Lily, each marked with serial numbers etched into their synthetic flesh.

"Mother of God..." Claire whispered, her hand over her mouth, horror turning her stomach. "She didn't just harvest our DNA. She farmed us."

"Keep moving," Daniel growled, his hand tightly wrapped around a captured assault rifle. Every fiber of his being demanded he burn this entire ship to ash, but his priority was the beating heart strapped to his chest. Lily was drifting in and out of consciousness, her forehead burning with a fever that felt hot enough to melt lead.

Suddenly, the red emergency klaxons throughout the hangar began to wail.

*WARNING: INTRUSION IN SECTOR FOUR. LETHAL COUNTERMEASURES ENGAGED.*

The heavy blast doors at the end of the main corridor slid open with a pneumatic hiss. Standing in the doorway, blocking the only path to the central control bridge, was Subject Prime.

Beside him stood the second golden-eyed twin, soaking wet from the ocean, his face contorted in psychotic rage, his small fists glowing with crackling orange electricity.

"You really should have stayed in the water, brother," Prime said, drawing two mono-molecular carbon blades from his back. "Out there, you had a chance to drown with your dignity. In here, Mother has given me permission to take you apart piece by piece."

"Claire, take Lily and get behind those cooling conduits," Daniel ordered quietly, not taking his eyes off his duplicate.

"Daniel, you can't fight both of them alone!" Claire protested, her eyes frantic. "Your ribs are broken!"

"I'm not alone," Daniel replied, cocking his weapon. "I have everything to lose. He has nothing. That makes me twice as dangerous. Go!"

Claire hesitated for a fraction of a second, then scooped Lily from the harness and darted behind a cluster of massive liquid-nitrogen coolant pipes.

Prime lunged.

The clone moved with impossible, superhuman speed, crossing forty feet of steel flooring in the blink of an eye. His carbon blade slashed downward in a vicious arc meant to decapitate Daniel.

Daniel didn't try to block it. He ducked beneath the swing, feeling the wind of the razor-sharp edge graze his cheek, and drove his combat knife upward into Prime’s right armpit—the only unarmored seam in his tactical suit.

The blade bit deep. Prime roared in surprise and pain, but his genetically modified nervous system suppressed the shock instantly. With his left hand, Prime drove a palm-strike directly into Daniel's broken ribs.

The agony exploded behind Daniel's eyes, robbing him of oxygen. He stumbled backward, crashing into an empty stasis pod, the thick glass shattering into a thousand sparkling shards.

Before Prime could follow up, the second twin stepped forward, his eyes burning gold. "Disintegrate the defective!" the child screamed.

The boy unleashed a concentrated beam of raw thermal energy straight at Daniel's chest.

Daniel rolled desperately across the glass-strewn floor as the beam obliterated the stasis pod, melting three inches of reinforced steel into glowing slag. The heat singed the hair on Daniel's arms, but as he rolled, his hand caught the heavy valve of the liquid-nitrogen coolant pipe.

With a roar of primal fury, Daniel pulled his sidearm and fired a single round directly into the brass pressure valve.

*BOOM!*

A blinding torrent of sub-zero liquid nitrogen erupted in a high-pressure jet, spraying across the corridor. The blast caught the golden-eyed twin squarely in the face and chest. The child didn't even have time to scream. The minus-three-hundred-degree gas flash-froze the boy solid within two seconds, crystallizing his flesh, his uniform, and the artificial blood in his veins.

Prime lunged through the freezing mist, his blade flashing toward Daniel's neck.

Daniel grabbed the frozen, statuesque body of the twin and shoved it into the path of Prime’s blade.

The carbon sword struck the frozen child. The impact shattered the frozen twin into ten thousand crystalline pieces of crimson ice.

Prime froze, his eyes widening in horror at the scattered remnants of his "brother."

That split-second hesitation was all Daniel needed.

Daniel stepped inside Prime’s guard, grabbed the clone by the throat, and slammed his head repeatedly into the titanium bulkhead until the steel dented. With a final, brutal twist, Daniel drove his combat knife through the clone’s throat, pinning him to the wall.

Prime choked, black synthetic blood bubbling past his lips. His amber eyes flickered, the light slowly dying.

"You... are... just... an echo..." Prime gurgled.

"No," Daniel whispered coldly into the clone’s ear. "I'm the original. And you’re just trash."