Chapter 54 - Bloodlines and Betrayal
The ascent into the rig’s lower maintenance tunnels was a grueling climb against freezing wind and dripping grease. Marcus moved first, clearing the gantry with swift, silent lethality, his suppressed weapon eliminating the two Ironclad guards stationed at the secondary drainage lock before they could even key their radios.
Within six minutes, our strike team had breached the lower sub-levels.
The interior of the *Prometheus Station* was nothing like the rusted industrial exterior suggested. Beyond the outer blast doors, the platform had been hollowed out into a clinical, multi-million-dollar subterranean laboratory. The walls were clad in sterile white composite panels; pressurized airlocks hissed with filtered oxygen, and banks of high-density server racks hummed with chilled liquid nitrogen coolant.
We moved through the central corridor in an inverted wedge formation, bypassing deserted research bays and high-containment biosafety suites. Everything was eerily quiet. The research personnel had clearly been evacuated or relocated to the upper helipad deck hours ago.
"Server hub is two hundred yards ahead through the primary decontamination lock," the lead operator signaled.
Suddenly, every fluorescent light in the corridor flickered and died, plunging us into absolute blackness.
A second later, sterile emergency red lamps blazed to life, bathing the steel walls in the color of fresh arterial blood.
A heavy mechanical clatter echoed behind us. Massive steel blast doors dropped from the ceiling, slamming into the deck with concussive force, cutting Marcus and four of his operators off from the forward team.
"Trap!" Marcus shouted, slamming his shoulder against the three-inch-thick ballistic glass window of the blast door. "Sarah! Fall back!"
Before I could turn, another blast door dropped directly behind me and the two remaining operators, sealing us inside a fifty-foot containment vestibule.
Pressurized vents in the ceiling hissed loudly, spraying a thick, odorless white gas into the room.
"Breach masks! Now!" the operator to my left yelled, pulling his tactical respirator down over his face. But the gas was not a nerve agent or tear gas. It was a dense aerosolized surfactant that instantly dissolved the optical sensors on their night-vision rigs and shorted out the electronic triggers of their advanced carbines with an electromagnetic ionic charge.
Both operators staggered back as an auxiliary wall panel slid open. Four heavily armored combatants stepped through the mist, firing high-velocity taser darts that struck both operators simultaneously. Ten thousand volts surged through their armor, dropping them instantly to the floor in violent muscle spasms.
I backed against the reinforced glass of the blast door. On the other side, Marcus was desperately hammering the ballistic pane, firing armor-piercing rounds from his sidearm into the glass, but the multi-layered polycarbonate barely cracked, spiderwebbing without giving way.
"Marcus!" I cried, banging my fists against the partition.
Through the mist on my side of the door, a figure stepped forward.
He wasn't wearing tactical armor. He wore a sharply tailored charcoal wool three-piece suit, an ivory pocket square, and silver-rimmed spectacles that sat perched on a sharp, aristocratic nose. His silver hair was neatly swept back, his posture impeccably upright.
He looked older, the lines around his eyes etched deeper by fifteen years of exile, but there was no mistaking the bone structure, the cold slate-blue eyes, and the thin, cruel curve of his mouth.
Dr. Raymond Lin had returned from the dead.
"You really shouldn't waste your ammunition, Mr. Vance," my father said, his voice crystal-clear through the intercom grille mounted beside the glass. "That glass was manufactured by your own defense subsidiary three years ago. You rated it to withstand a sustained blast from a fifty-caliber anti-materiel rifle. Surely you remember your own quality assurance metrics?"
"Let her go, Lin!" Marcus roared, his voice muffled by the thick glass, his eyes blazing with murderous fury. "If you touch one hair on her head, I will hunt you to the ends of this earth and erase everything you've ever built!"
"Such passion," Raymond said with a calm, patronizing sigh, turning his gaze toward me. "A bit theatrical for my taste, but I suppose after the pedestrian Julian Cross, you were drawn to a man of definitive action. A natural psychological compensation."
I straightened my back, pulling myself up to my full height, refusing to let my hands tremble as I faced the man who had abandoned me to the wolves.
"You aren't my father," I said, my voice cutting through the red-lit silence of the containment bay. "You are just a parasite with a medical degree."
May you like
Raymond smiled—a warm, affectionate, utterly monstrous smile. "You always did have your mother’s sharp tongue, Sarah. But unlike your mother, you possess the intellect to reshape human evolution. Now, walk with me. We have much to discuss before the United States Navy realizes their radar systems are being spoofed."
***
