Chapter 3 - The War Room on the 50th Floor
The executive penthouse of Sterling Tower was designed to be an architectural statement—all floor-to-ceiling glass, polished slate, and minimalist German furniture. It was a space built for a man who lived entirely in his head.
By Tuesday afternoon, it looked like a kindergarten that had been converted into a command center.
Two half-eaten boxes of artisanal pizza sat on my half-million-dollar mahogany desk. Lucas was currently using an automated corporate laser pointer to chase a reflection across the acoustic ceiling tiles, while Noah sat in my leather swivel chair, his small legs sticking straight out as he colored on the back of my quarterly financial printouts with a pack of crayons Margaret had miraculously sourced from a supply closet.
"Mr. Sterling," Margaret said, stepping into the office with a stack of digital tablets. Her hair was slightly disheveled, a rare sight for a woman who prided herself on flawless presentation. "The legal department is in a state of absolute paralysis. Apex's attorneys have already filed an emergency injunction in the Southern District of New York. They are claiming immediate custody of the boys under an obscure 'synthetic biological asset' provision from a contract you signed in 2018."
"A synthetic biological asset?" I repeated, my knuckles turning white as I gripped the edge of the desk. "They are talking about my sons as if they are lines of code or proprietary software."
"To Apex, they are," a voice said from the doorway.
I looked up to see Marcus Vance—no relation to Evelyn, though the coincidence was a grim joke. Marcus was my chief technology officer and my closest friend since our days at MIT. He looked exhausted, his tie loosened, his eyes bloodshot behind his thick-rimmed glasses. He carried a heavily shielded external hard drive.
"I managed to bypass the encryption on the public registry filings for Apex Cryo-Genetics," Marcus said, setting the drive down between the pizza boxes. "Alex... what they’re doing isn't just standard fertility research. It’s worse. Much worse."
"Explain," I said, glancing over at the boys to make sure they were distracted. Lucas had transitioned to building a fortress out of my brass paperweights.
"Your accident in 2018 should have killed you," Marcus said, tapping the tablet to bring up a complex wireframe diagram of a human DNA strand. "The medical reports from your recovery showed an unprecedented rate of cellular regeneration in your spinal column and deep muscular tissue. Your body didn't just heal; it optimized. Apex discovered that your genome contains a rare homozygous mutation—the Delta-9 sequence. It’s essentially a biological shield against cellular decay. If they can isolate and replicate it, they aren't just looking at a cure for paralysis; they’re looking at a trillion-dollar anti-aging monopoly."
"And they used Grace to get it," I whispered, the horror sinking into my bones.
"They needed a compatible maternal match to ensure embryonic stability," Marcus nodded grimly. "Grace was a brilliant geneticist herself—that's how she met you during the initial university trials. When she realized Apex wasn't trying to help you have a family, but rather using your tragedy to create a proprietary human lineage, she took the embryos and ran. They didn't find her until two years later. She agreed to stay in their facility only to keep the boys safe from their surgical extraction plans."
"Daddy?"
I turned. Noah had stopped coloring. He was looking at me through the gap in the leather chair, his small brow furrowed in a way that mirrored my own expression exactly when I was deep in a code analysis.
"Yes, Noah?" I said, my voice softening instantly.
"Is Mama in trouble because of us?" he asked.
I walked over to the chair, kneeling down so I was at eye level with him. I reached out, my fingers gently brushing against the star-shaped birthmark on his shoulder that was visible through his slipped collar. It was the exact duplicate of the one I carried—a cosmic signature that no laboratory could ever truly patent.
"Your mama is the bravest woman I’ve ever known," I told him, looking him dead in the eyes. "And she sent you to me because she knew that nobody—not Dr. Vance, not their lawyers, not their whole company—can take you away from me. You are safe here, Noah. Both of you."
"We aren't assets," Lucas said from the floor, his laser pointer dropping to the rug. He looked up, his small chin trembling. "That's what the men in the white coats called us. Asset One and Asset Two."
A cold, dark fury settled into my chest. It was a feeling I hadn't experienced since the day of the crash—a refusal to let the world dictate what was allowed to survive.
"Marcus," I said, not looking back at my CTO.
May you like
"Yeah, Alex?"
"Call our PR team. Tell them to schedule a live press conference in the lobby of Sterling Tower for tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. If Apex wants to claim my sons are proprietary property, let's make them argue that case in front of fifty million people."
