Rain streaked down the window of Sierra's penthouse like tears on glass. She stood motionless, staring at the photo Xavier had handed her—an image of a girl, no more than twenty, taken from a surveillance drone outside a biotech facility in Prague. She had Sierra's eyes, her jawline, her stance. But there was no warmth. No expression. Just haunting, robotic focus.
"That's not me," Sierra whispered.
"No," Xavier murmured from the other side of the room. "But it's what Crestwell made in your image."
"She's real," Sierra said, almost to herself. "He made her from me…"
He stepped closer. "She's not just made from you. She is you—digitally enhanced, emotionally reprogrammed. VX-087 wasn't just cloning. It was intellectual inheritance. Mental maps, memory transplants, even tactical reflexes were copied from your recorded missions."
Sierra's knees buckled slightly, but she caught herself against the frame of the window.
"She's not just a clone," she said hoarsely. "She's a living weapon... with my mind."
"Not all of it," Xavier said quietly. "But enough to pass as you. Enough to kill like you."
Sierra turned to face him, her voice sharpened by disbelief and fury. "You let this happen."
"I tried to stop it. I infiltrated Crestwell's early circle to get close to the project, to protect you from the inside. I didn't know he had succeeded until Geneva."
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, her voice rising.
"Because I didn't know if you'd believe me. And because I was scared," he said honestly. "Scared that you'd see the monster I used to be before I met you. Scared that you'd walk away."
She wanted to scream. To run. But her mind was already miles ahead, drawing connections.
If Crestwell had built a replica of her… had he done the same to her daughter?
Her voice trembled. "And the child?"
"She was taken after birth," Xavier said. "Crestwell implanted a tracking chip. It was removed later, but not before the Program extracted several DNA samples. I believe she's part of Phase Two."
Sierra's breath caught in her throat. Her child. Weaponized.
She walked to her safe and pulled out a sealed envelope. Inside was a photograph she'd hidden away for years. A newborn girl swaddled in white, her tiny face pressed to Sierra's chest. No name. No fingerprints. Just hope.
Sierra held it next to the drone image.
The resemblance was undeniable.
Her child. Stolen. Cloned. Possibly turned into a replica.
She clenched her fist. "I'm going to find her. And I'm going to burn Crestwell's empire to the ground."
---
Two days later, Sierra arrived in Prague under the name Dr. Isabel Dervaux, a world-renowned neuroscientist invited to Mirador's Eastern European symposium on cognitive expansion.
In reality, she was infiltrating the underground facility Xavier's intel had pinpointed.
She moved through the security scans like water, dressed in a sleek black blazer, her hair dyed a dark auburn, fake spectacles perched on her nose. She was calm, precise, untouchable.
Inside, the facility was all chrome and silence. Doctors moved like ghosts. Patients—if one could call them that—were strapped to neural scanners, some whispering numbers, others drooling in comas. On-screen monitors listed subjects by code, not name.
VX-087-R3 // Behavioral Sync: 83%
VX-087-A1 // Weapon Reflex: Optimal
VX-087-B0 // Instability Detected—Pending Termination
Then she saw it.
VX-087-A0. Status: Secure. Subject: [REDACTED]. Location: Chamber 5.
Her breath caught.
A0. The original. The alpha.
Her daughter?
She moved like a shadow past the control wing and into the inner labs, where the air was colder and the guards wore head-to-toe black. Sierra disabled the cameras using a signal disruptor concealed in her pocket watch, then stepped into Chamber 5.
The room was dark, lit only by the blue glow of containment glass.
Inside stood a girl—eighteen, maybe nineteen—her face blank, her posture rigid. Electrodes clung to her temples. Her eyes snapped toward Sierra the moment she entered.
Not blank.
Not docile.
Alert.
And identical.
It was like staring into a mirror laced with steel.
"Who are you?" Sierra whispered.
The girl tilted her head. "Viper."
Sierra flinched.
"That's my name," she said.
"No," the girl replied calmly. "It was. Now it's mine."
Sierra felt the ground tilt beneath her. Her child wasn't just alive.
She had become the replacement.
---
A voice crackled from overhead.
"You found her, didn't you?" Arlo Crestwell said through the speaker. "The daughter. The weapon. The future."
Sierra turned slowly, eyes narrowed at the unseen voice.
"She's not your weapon," she hissed. "She's mine."
"Not anymore," Crestwell replied. "She's better now. No fear. No pain. Just instinct."
Sierra's eyes never left the girl.
Then quietly, she said, "What's your name?"
The girl stared back. "Annabel."
The name hit Sierra like a bullet. It was the name she had whispered to her child before they took her.
Annabel.
Her daughter remembered.
Even through programming.
Even through steel.
She remembered.
And now, Sierra would do everything to bring her back.
---