Service dog urgently barks at Pregnant Woman… But when officers Discovered the Reality, it was far too late…

I thought it was just my imagination. Cassandra looked up sharply. It’s not imagination.

It’s neurological. You’re connected. Somehow, genetically or cognitively, you’re picking up signals.

Shared memory, maybe even instinctual communication. Marlow’s voice was barely a whisper. They didn’t just make us, they linked us.

Later that night, Cassandra decrypted a flash drive found with the papers. On it was a blinking map. Five red markers scattered across the U.S. Each one matched a name from the list.

These aren’t just identities, she said. They’re locations. Dormant subjects.

Probably unawakened. Thatcher leaned over her shoulder. Or already activated.

Marlow stood, the map reflected in her eyes. If I was triggered, they could be too. Or they could be in danger.

Like I was. Cassandra nodded grimly. And if they are waking up, they won’t know who to trust.

Thatcher added, that makes them vulnerable, or deadly. Marlow walked to the far corner of the room, where the pocket watch from the vault sat on a small table. She picked it up, feeling it steady ticking in her palm.

There’s something about this watch, she said. Something that keeps showing up in my dreams. I think it’s more than sentimental.

I think it was used to time something. Cassandra glanced at the network code scribbled on Marlow’s DNA report. That sequence at the bottom.

It matches part of this signal. That watch might be tuned to the beacon. Thatcher looked between the two.

You’re saying she can track them? No, Marlow answered quietly. I think I can feel them. As the team made plans to investigate the closest subject on the list, the map blinked again.

One of the markers shifted slightly. Movement. In the snowy forests of Oregon, a teenage boy bolted upright in bed, nose bleeding, breath shallow.

He looked at the sky as if someone had just called his name. He wiped the blood away with a trembling hand. And whispered, Marlow? He didn’t know her name.

But somehow, he’d always been waiting for her. The town of Silver Pines, Oregon, was the kind of place people forgot. Quiet, surrounded by forest, and buried in snow most of the year.

Kane Ward had lived there his entire life, raised by a retired military contractor who claimed to be his uncle. The man was strict, reclusive, and never spoke about Kane’s parents. Whenever Kane asked, the answer was always the same, they were lost in service.

But Kane never bought that story. Not really. Because sometimes, late at night, he heard voices in his dreams.

And sometimes, he saw her. She was always the same girl. Blonde hair.

Dark eyes. Strong, but scared. Sometimes she was in a lab.

Other times, she was running. Kane didn’t know who she was, but every time he woke from those dreams, his hands would shake, his chest would ache, and his nose would bleed. He’d stopped telling his uncle years ago.

The last time he brought it up, the man had burned a photo Kane had drawn, the girl’s face, right in front of him. You weren’t made to remember, he had said. That sentence haunted him more than the dreams.

That morning, after the strongest dream yet, Kane had felt something different, like a switch had been flipped. The girl had whispered something this time. A name.

Marlo. And when he woke up, the old clock in the hallway, untouched for years, was ticking again. He didn’t know why that scared him more than the dream itself.

He went to the basement, to the old chest his uncle had always told him never to open. But something inside Kane told him. He had the right now.

Inside the chest were medical files. Dozens. Some with his name.

Others with codes. 6A02. One file had a picture of him at age five, hooked up to machines.

Another showed his blood under a microscope. Helix Adaptive Subject, Ward. His hands began to tremble.

He wasn’t adopted. He wasn’t orphaned. He was built, trained, and kept under watch.

His whole life had been contained, and now the walls were beginning to crack. At that moment, he heard tires on snow outside. His uncle was home early.

Kane grabbed the files, shoved them into his backpack, and climbed out through the back window. He didn’t know where he was going. Only that something inside him was pulling him east.

Drawing him. Calling him. The name, Marlo, echoed in his head like a beacon…