Chapter 92 - The Twin’s Ultimatum: A Mirror Across the Bloodied Waves
"She’s overriding the fly-by-wire system!" Miller yelled, frantically throwing circuit breakers overhead. "It’s not an external hack! The signals are coming from inside the cabin!"
Claire looked down at Leo. The infant’s hands were splayed against the reinforced glass of the passenger window. Every time his small chest expanded, the avionics screen flared with matching hexadecimal strings. The boy was not being manipulated; his biological signature was acting as a living beacon, bridging the transport’s encrypted computers with the mothership's central processing hub.
"He trusts her frequency," Claire said, terror and maternal fury wrestling in her chest. "He thinks she’s me. The genetic match is ninety-nine percent identical. To his instincts, her voice is the mother who bore him."
"Then we make him hear the real one," Dante said, stepping between Claire and the glass. He dropped to one knee, ignoring the lurching turbulence as the VTOL plummeted toward the waiting maw of the *Tartarus*. He placed his scarred hand over the infant’s tiny palms, his deep baritone cutting through the electronic whine. "Leo. Look at me."
The child blinked. The violet glow wavered for a fraction of a second.
"You are a Moretti," Dante growled softly, his eyes burning with fierce devotion. "You bow to no shadow. You answer to your mother, and your mother alone."
Claire wrapped her arms around both boys, pressing her cheek against Leo’s feverish forehead. She didn't sing the lullaby the imposter had hummed over the radio. Instead, she leaned into his ear and whispered the four-digit serial sequence stamped onto the tarnished silver dog tags around her neck—the secret code her father had taught her on the night their family fell apart.
"Seven-three-nine-zero," she whispered fiercely. "Stand down, little soldier. Stand down."
The effect was instantaneous. Leo gasped, the violent purple glare fading from his eyes into deep, liquid hazel. The child burst into frantic tears, burying his face into Claire’s collarbone.
Instantly, the VTOL jerked violently as manual control snapped back to Miller.
"I’ve got the stick!" Miller shouted. "Targeting sensors just lost lock! But we’re already inside their defensive perimeter—fifty feet above their flight deck!"
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Through the windshield, the cavernous interior of the *Tartarus* loomed like the ribcage of an iron beast. Rows of armored syndicate operatives stood in defensive formations, their high-caliber rifles trained directly at the descending aircraft. And standing at the elevated observation bridge above them was a woman dressed in obsidian combat armor, her face an exact, terrifying duplicate of Claire's own.
***
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