The air in the Vane Estate changed the moment the "Orchard" alert flashed amber on Julian's retina. The ambient hum of the house—the soft jazz playing in the kitchen, the climate control adjusting for the evening chill—stuttered for a fraction of a second.
"Sarah, the bunker. Take the West stairs," Julian said, his voice as sharp as a scalpel.
Clara looked up, her physics textbook forgotten on the rug. "Julian? You're making that face again. The one you make when the servers crash."
Julian knelt, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. He reached out and squeezed her hand. "Just a glitch in the perimeter, Clara. I need to run a manual diagnostic. Go with Sarah. I'll come find you for that drone build in twenty minutes. Promise."
He watched them disappear behind the reinforced oak paneling of the library. The moment the latch clicked, Julian's posture shifted. The "Brother" was gone. The Architect remained.
"Silas," Julian said into the empty room.
"Already on it, sir," Silas's voice crackled through the hidden speakers. "Internal security is green, but the Orchard's physical sensors just went dark. Someone didn't hack the system—they cut the wires."
Julian walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the North Woods. He tapped a sequence on his watch. The glass polarized, turning into a massive tactical display.
Five miles away, a heat signature was blooming. Not a person. A fire.
"He's burning the trees," Silas whispered over the comms. "The DNA Vault is shielded, but the surface structures are going up."
"He's not there for the vault," Julian muttered, grabbing a sleek, matte-black case from beneath his desk. He opened it to reveal a specialized pulse-rifle—non-lethal, but capable of dropping a rhino. "He's there to draw me out. He knows I can't let those life-support pods lose power."
Julian stepped out onto the balcony. A sleek, silent VTOL drone descended from the roof, its hatch opening like a hungry mouth.
"Stay with the girls, Silas. If anyone breathes on that library door, you level the hallway."
"Copy that. Good hunting, Julian."
The flight to the Orchard took less than three minutes, but to Julian, it felt like a decade. Below him, the ancient apple trees—the cover for his secret sanctuary—were wreathed in thick, oily smoke.
As the drone hovered over the clearing, Julian saw him.
A man stood in the center of the fire, wearing a heavy, scorched leather apron. He wasn't running. He was waiting. In his hand, he held a long, curved blade used for grafting trees—or harvesting souls.
Alistair Thorne. The Butcher.
Julian jumped from the drone, the grav-boots dampening his landing with a heavy thud. He leveled the pulse-rifle at Thorne's chest.
"You're a long way from the city, Alistair," Julian said, the wind whipping his hair. "I dismantled your employers three years ago. Why crawl out of the mud now?"
Thorne didn't flinch. He reached into the pocket of his apron and tossed something at Julian's feet. It was a small, scorched cylinder. A Bio-Sentry Neural-Link.
"I didn't come for the trees, Architect," Thorne rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "I came for the girl. The one in Pod 04. The one who looks just like my wife."
Julian's heart hammered. Pod 04. The woman who had been the first "error" Julian had tried to save.
"She's not your wife, Alistair. She's a victim of the men you used to protect."
"She's a debt," Thorne replied, stepping into the flames. "And Elias Sterling is calling it in. He says you've grown too fond of your little 'Hospital.' He wants the Master Key, Julian. Or he starts waking up your 'errors' one by one... without the anesthesia."
Thorne pointed toward the horizon, where a second fire was starting.
Directly in the path of the Vane Estate.
"Choice is yours, CEO," Thorne grinned, his teeth yellow in the firelight. "Save the ghosts in the basement, or save the sister in the library. You can't optimize both."