Chapter 38 - Surgical Sabotage
"That's not just a replica," Marco hissed, his voice trembling with an ancient, venomous rage as we slipped through the access door and took cover behind a bank of stainless-steel cryogenic freezers. "That is the original chair. Vance stole it from my father’s penthouse the night he had Julian admitted to the clinic."
"He didn't steal it for the leather, Marco," I whispered, peering around the corner of the freezer.
The antique chair was surrounded by an elaborate spiderweb of thick fiber-optic conduits, liquid helium cooling pipes, and high-voltage power arrays. It looked less like a piece of furniture and more like an electric chair redesigned for a high-tech execution.
Standing before the console was Director Vance.
He was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, his pristine white doctor's coat draped casually over the back of the Bellini chair. He held a glass of scotch in one hand and a tablet in the other, calmly reviewing real-time telemetry streams as if he were monitoring a routine clinical trial rather than hunting human beings in the dark.
Around the mezzanine, four private security operators armed with suppressed submachine guns stood at parade rest, their eyes fixed on the main elevator banks.
"They're expecting an assault from the street," Silas whispered, slipping a tactical flashbang grenade from his vest. "They don't know we entered through the pneumatic shaft."
"Silas, you take the two on the right," Marco commanded in a whisper, his eyes locking onto the targets with cold, professional detachment. "I'll take the two on the left. Laura, the minute the shooting starts, you get to that console. Vance has the master override codes on that tablet. If he hits the failsafe before we isolate the server, he can trigger a fatal current in every device registered to the Janus network."
"Including yours," I said, my heart constricting.
"Including mine," Marco agreed, his hand reaching up to touch the side of my face. His thumb stroked my cheekbone, his touch brief, intense, and filled with everything we hadn't had time to say. "Make sure I keep breathing, Doc."
"Don't give me a reason to restart you," I replied, my voice steady despite the hammer of my pulse.
Silas pulled the pin on the flashbang. "Three... two... one."
Silas hurled the canister over the top of the glass partition.
It detonated with a blinding, ear-splitting flash of white magnesium fire that turned the pristine white atrium into a screaming tempest of shattered light and concussive sound.
Marco and Silas broke cover simultaneously.
*THWACK-THWACK-THWACK.*
Marco’s Kimber barked with lethal precision. The two guards on the left mezzanine collapsed before they could even level their submachine guns, their bodies tumbling over the stainless-steel railings and crashing onto the marble floor below.
Silas engaged the remaining two guards with brutal, close-quarters bursts from his carbine. One guard dropped instantly; the second managed to return fire, sending a spray of 9mm rounds chewing through the glass partitions, showering the mezzanine in glittering shards of safety glass.
I didn't wait for the gunfire to stop.
I sprinted across the open marble floor, leaping over the body of a fallen guard, and lunged up the steel spiral staircase leading to the command mezzanine.
Director Vance hadn't panicked.
He had dropped his scotch glass, which lay shattered on the floor, and was currently standing behind the Bellini chair, his fingers frantically tapping commands into the central touchscreen console.
"Did you really think Arthur's little secret could stay hidden forever, Laura?" Vance sneered, not looking up from the screen as I reached the top of the stairs. "Your father was a coward. He had the power to reshape human biology, to eliminate cardiovascular mortality for the global elite, and he threw it away because of sentimental squeamishness!"
"He threw it away because he knew you were a psychopath, Vance!" I screamed, lunging across the console to grab his wrist.
Vance twisted with surprising, violent speed. He was older, but he was taller and heavier. His hand shot out, catching me by the throat and slamming me backward against the leather armrest of Samuel Bellini’s chair.
My breath exploded from my lungs. The sharp edge of the mahogany frame dug into my spine.
"You should have stayed in the emergency room, Dr. Keller," Vance hissed, his face inches from mine, his eyes wild with megalomaniacal madness. He raised a small, pneumatic surgical injector in his right hand—the same device he had used to paralyze Julian. "You would have made an exquisite research subject. Now, I'll just have to harvest the chip from your corpse!"
May you like
He plunged the needle toward my carotid artery.
***
