Three hundred wealthy guests watched a maid stop Vanessa’s attack with one hand, never realizing the woman in the gray uniform had once been trained to dismantle dangerous threats. / Chapter 92 / 130

Chapter 92 - River of Shards

The wake of the stealth craft churned the black water into frothing foam, sending waves crashing against the muddy shore. Naomi didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the icy current, swimming with powerful, rhythmic strokes toward the emergency mooring point Julian had foolishly left unguarded fifty yards downstream: a second high-speed interceptor craft tethered beneath the rotting wooden pilings of an abandoned industrial dock.

She pulled herself onto the timber deck, water pouring from her gray uniform. With a flick of her combat knife, she severed the mooring lines, vaulted into the cockpit, and hotwired the ignition harness with two swift twists of copper wire.

The supercharged marine engine snarled to life. Naomi slammed the twin throttles forward.

The boat surged ahead, cutting through the heavy rain. Up ahead, three hundred yards through the mist, the navigation lights of Nine-Bravo’s craft flickered like red embers against the black expanse of the river.

Naomi wiped the stinging river water from her eyes. The revelation clawed at her thoughts, though she forced her heart rate down into tactical rhythm: *A twin. An identical sequence.* Generation Nine had not been an individual project, but a cohort of genetic clones engineered to infiltrate the world's most untouchable dynasties. When Naomi had rebelled, vanished, and taken refuge as a quiet maid in Whitmore House, she believed the facility had burned to the ground behind her.

She had been wrong. The Apex Council had kept the mold.

Her interceptor rapidly closed the distance. Nine-Bravo’s craft abruptly cut its engines and swerved hard into a sideways drift, using its reinforced steel hull to create a barricade across the narrow river bend.

The external floodlight atop Bravo’s cabin ignited, pinning Naomi in a blinding cone of white radiance.

"You always were predictable, Sister!" Bravo's voice crackled through the boat's external horn. "You chase what you cannot save!"

High above them on the Schuylkill Expressway bridge, headlights of late-night freight trucks streaked through the downpour, oblivious to the war being fought on the black mirror below. Naomi gripped the steering wheel with her left hand, drawing her secondary sidearm with her right.