Chapter 71 - Severed Lines
I didn't hesitate. Dropping low against the sub-zero draft, I swept my arm forward, catching the cold stainless-steel canister just as it struck the base of the desk. The cryogenic vapor was already rolling across the floor like an incoming tide, thick and blinding, reducing our visibility to three feet.
"Sarah, the duct!" Marcus shouted over the roaring hiss of the venting liquid.
He was firing suppression bursts into the fog toward the door where Arthur’s private security detail was attempting to cut their way through the half-jammed blast hatch. Metal screeched against metal as hydraulic jaws bit into the exterior frame.
Through the mist, a shadow loomed over me.
Arthur Linwood appeared like a phantom, his coat dusted in frost, his hand reaching out not with a father's touch, but with the ruthless grip of a thief reclaiming his prize. His fingers dug into the metal handle of the canister.
"Let go, Sarah," he commanded, his breath billowing in massive plumes of steam. "You are my blood, but I will bury you in this floor if you stand in my way."
I looked into his eyes—the eyes that had abandoned me to the cold world, that had watched silently while my mother died in agony, that had engineered every nightmare I had survived over the last decade.
"I was your daughter," I whispered, shivering violently as the frost bit into my cheeks. "Now, I am your competitor. And you are obsolete."
With a sudden, violent twist of my hips, I slammed the heavy steel cylinder upward, striking Arthur directly beneath his jaw. The crack of bone echoed through the fog. Arthur staggered back, blood spraying from his split lip, his eyes widening in pure, unadulterated shock.
Marcus stepped between us, leveling his weapon point-blank at Arthur’s chest. "Next time, Linwood, it’s a hollow-point. Move, Sarah! The maintenance shaft!"
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Behind us, Brandt collapsed onto his knees in the freezing fog, clutching his throat as the oxygen levels plummeted to lethal thresholds. Arthur wiped the blood from his chin, his glacial eyes burning with something far deadlier than anger: an obsession that would never stop.
"Run then, Sarah," Arthur whispered through the mist, stepping back toward the secondary egress corridor behind the vault. "Run back to your little life. But the foundation is already infected."
