The massive gorilla barrels toward me, its hate-filled eyes intent on ripping me to pieces. As its glare locks onto me, we recognize each other moments before impact. It's the giant silverback that Jude and Hannah had held in captivity, the one that wanted to eat my family alive. But as it draws near—seemingly against its will—it screeches to a halt right in front of me.

With fury, the gorilla snarls and pounds its fists into its chest. My body quakes as my pulse skyrockets up into my throat. Just when I think it might give up, it lurches at me again, but freezes an inch away from smashing my skull into oblivion. When the creature realizes it can't get to me, it roars in frustration and then lumbers off to sit in the middle of the hangar on its haunches, huffing and puffing like a sulking child. For a few intense seconds, I think my heart is going to explode inside me, but in the waning moments that follow, I see Jude with her tablet, forcing the primate to adhere to her commands.

The gorilla stabs the air with its finger, aiming the digit back at me with a vicious scowl. "Shot me. HU-MAN. Shot. ME."

Blood oozes from a wound in the creature's shoulder. I meant to hit its spine, proof I'm not great with a gun, but at least I got it. That's the only reason my family is still alive.

Sweat beads on my forehead, threatening to trickle down my brow and blur my vision. As Jude approaches me, I struggle to stop panting and will my thudding heart to return to normal.

She stops a few feet away from me. "It would be wise for you to put the weapon down."

As much as I hate it, I know she's right, so I comply with her demand. The moment the rifle leaves my fingertips, a guard rushes in and snatches it away.

"I'll handle this," Damian says as he positions himself next to his daughter and puts an arm around her. He observes me with a subtle grin and eyes that burn with intensity, a kind of fire capable of killing. That, I assume... but can't be sure of yet. "May I have your tablet?" he asks Jude.

She passes the device to him, and I think his plans are to sick the gorilla on me, but he hands the tablet to a guard in exchange for a sidearm. That leads me to believe he doesn't plan on sending the primate to get me. Rather, he wants to shoot me point blank. This development convinces me he has the ability and ruthlessness to kill.

"I don't tolerate failure," Damian says. "The blame for your wife and children escaping lies on the shoulders of one person."

With a simple smile befitting a wolf, Damian aims the gun at Jude's head and pulls the trigger. She doesn't try to avoid it; she just stands there accepting her fate. The bullet blasts through her temple and blows out an enormous hole near her ear on the other side of her head. Her body collapses to the concrete floor and lies motionless. A shockwave of horror rips through me as I realize Damian Lucent has murdered his eighteen-year-old daughter in front of me, like he has ice in his veins, or something much more sinister.

Hannah recoils, her face petrified. Martinez and her guards take a step back with looks of dumbfounded disgust.

As I stare at Jude's lifeless body, I'm struck by what I don't see.

Blood.

It's then I realize how Jude could had lived for over a thousand years in the bunker, while the flood waters covered the Earth and beyond. Because she wasn't human.

"She's an android," Damian says. "Always has been."

He hands the gun back to the guard.

"My actual daughter died in the early days of the flood. The rising water got her. In my loneliness, I had a business partner who had ties to the space ark. I had that person create an android version of her." He sighs with tired eyes. "But I knew the moment I awakened from cryo I couldn't live with a robot Jude any longer. My daughter is gone. She fulfilled her purpose. Now, I have to fulfill mine."

Hannah takes the tablet from the guard with trembling hands. "I suspected something wasn't right with Jude, but I kept it to myself. I never could have imagined this."

Damian crosses his arms, which reveal the sculpted nature of his biceps. His shoulders have the defined wideness of a weightlifter, his torso V-shaped down to his tight abdomen.

"As soon as I awoke, I was brought up to speed concerning your flight from the super volcano." He pauses, his bottom lip lowering and veering to the side like he's contemplating an important issue, or as if something weighs on him heavily. "Have you ever wondered why Abraham didn't try harder to save you from the eruption? I mean, I heard he moved you and your growing family to a remote location in Canada. But that wasn't far enough away from the epicenter of the blast."

I have considered that. That's why we went along with Jude's plan for us to come to Hawaii. To the bunker. That decision saved us, but I'm second guessing myself now.

"You and Eve were supposed to be the last clones sent to Earth, onboard the last habitat." Damian continues. "If that were the case, why didn't he move heaven and earth to save you? Pardon the pun."

I don't have an answer for that, and it doesn't sit right with me. It irritates me.

I grind my teeth as he presses on.

"I'll tell you why. Because you weren't the last hope for humanity, not according to Abraham's actions. And your habitat certainly wasn't the last one. He has one more."

"Where?" I ask. "I was there. Ours was the last one. If there was another, I would have seen it."

"What about the outer ring of the station?" A sly grin plays at the corners of his mouth. "I can see your mind spinning. That's right. The Designers had an emergency hab built into the ark. The outer ring can detach from the core. It has heat shields and everything. If you didn't pan out, he could have sent the emergency habitat down in a heartbeat. Probably already has. I suspect he's already moved on from you and Eve. Got himself another version of your family, starting from scratch somewhere else."

"You're lying."

"Am I?" He shrugs. "Of course, it doesn't matter because your time is about up." He turns to Hannah. "Send out the drones and shoot the tracer down. Once his family is dead, kill him, too."

I stare at her in stunned silence as she holds out a hand and the guard gives her the tablet.

She swipes a finger across the tablet screen—the same device that controls the gorilla. She taps it twice, then twice more, and a pair of eagle-sized drones with propeller blades at all four corners rise from the floor in the back of the hangar and buzz by overhead. The duo is armed with small missiles under each side of its undercarriage. Realizing the miniature aircrafts can bring down the tracer and kill my family punches me in the gut. I'm helpless as the drones soar out of the bunker and rise higher in the sky.

"They've locked onto the target's GPS," Hannah says. Her eyes appear regretful, but decisive in the side she's chosen. "I've initiated the kill order. It won't be long now."

Damian directs the guards to escort me back deeper into the bunker. As he takes the lead and enters the animal lab with Zoe, the rest of us bring up the rear. I have to make my move now. Once I get back inside, all will be lost. It's then I notice Hannah is a few feet away. Then I glimpse the gorilla's slumped over form sitting in the middle of the hangar.

I have to move now.

With an elbow, I knock the nearest guard aside and then lunge toward Hannah. I've grown to like the woman, even gave her one of our six babies, which I now regret.

I crash into her and watch the tablet fly from her grasp. As I fall, I stretch out for it and catch it. Before Martinez or her guards can react, lying on my back, I swipe to the primate's controls and discover all the commands staring me in the face. On past expeditions, I had paid attention to how the scientists controlled the primates with the tablets. With a jab of my finger, I select 'target all'. It's a risky tactic, one I believe will put me in danger too, but it works. On the screen, red circles appear around all the moving targets except me. As everyone moves, the red circles follow them. The mind control implant must act like a motion detector, identifying threats based on movement. It targets everyone but me because I'm holding the device.

The gorilla bursts into action, rampaging across the room, reaching us in seconds, slinging guards left and right. Their weapons turn on the creature, but most of the rounds they fire miss and others fail to make direct hits.

I scramble to my feet and snatch a set of keys dangling from a dead guard's waist. During previous expeditions, I had noticed how each guard carried the keys to a particular SUV. This person lays with his limbs twisted at odd angles, but with all the carnage I've seen since we came to this planet, it doesn't register. Instead, I have a one tracked mind... get out of here and save my family at any cost.

As the gorilla huffs and puffs between roars, stomping and smashing, I spot the row of armored vehicles. Each one has a unique number on the front quarter panel. The key chain reads: KF-04. The fourth SUV in the line of ten is mine.

Before I climb in, I witness Hannah limping away and disappearing through the door to the animal lab. Although she sent the drones after my wife and children, something inside of me is glad she got away from the gorilla.

The first thing I notice are the four different guns hanging in a rack on the back glass. There's a sniper rifle, a machine gun, a sawed-off shotgun, and a tranquilizer rifle. There are also ammo boxes strapped down below the rack with sideways facing seats in the rear. This vehicle was made for quick military-like action, nothing like the other SUVs used on our research expeditions.

With time running out, I toss the tablet in the passenger seat, crank the engine, and slam the gas pedal to the floor. As the gorilla finishes the remaining guards, the armored SUV thunders through the hangar doors with me behind the wheel, intent on intercepting the drones before they reach the tracer and kill the ones I love.