Chapter 5 - The Red Collar
The sudden silence in the foyer was deafening, broken only by the hum of the wind outside and the heavy, ragged panting of the dog.
Bruno stood over the fallen bodies, blood dripping from his muzzle—none of it his own, save for the reopening of the gash on his leg. He looked up at Julian, his dark eyes wide and alert, scanning the darkness beyond the shattered doorway. The sniper had likely repositioned into the surrounding forest. They had minutes, perhaps seconds, before a secondary assault team moved in.
Julian walked over to the first operative Bruno had neutralized. Kneeling beside the unconscious man, Julian reached into the tactical vest, pulling out a hardened satellite tablet and a collection of laminated identity tags.
Across the top of the clearance card was stamped an emblem Julian recognized with bitter clarity: Ares Biomimetic Labs—a black-budget private defense contractor whose hostile acquisition bid Julian had rejected during a shareholder meeting three months ago.
""You weren't an escapee,"" Julian muttered, looking down at Bruno. ""You were their premier field prototype. And you came straight to my house.""
He flipped open the tablet. The screen unlocked via the operative's thumbprint, displaying a biometric telemetry map. The map didn't just show Bruno’s coordinates; it showed an intricate family lineage record. Beneath Bruno's biological profile was a high-resolution photograph of Julian’s late wife, Sarah, taken seven years ago at an overseas military testing facility where she had served as lead geneticist before her supposed death in a laboratory fire.
Beneath her image were two words: Subject Handler: Sarah Vance (Status: Active).
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A cold chill flooded Julian’s veins, freezing his thoughts. Sarah wasn't dead.
Before he could process the screen, Bruno let out a sharp, urgent whine, turning toward the kitchen passage. The basement alarm began to chime on Julian's smartwatch—the secondary perimeter of the lower vault had just been breached from the utility tunnel.
