Chapter 44 - Submerged Cathedrals
The scalpel came down with surgical precision.
Marco wasn't a doctor, but he had spent his life dealing in anatomical mortality; he knew precisely where the flesh yielded to bone and where metal met tendon. The obsidian tip sliced through the seam of my shirt, cutting down to the synthetic border of Prototype Zero.
A blinding spike of agony flared behind my eyes as the blade parted the first conductive fiber.
*SNAP.*
The overhead monitors went haywire. The neural progress bar flickered, dropping sharply:
*OVERWRITE INTERRUPTED: 34%... 22%... 11%...*
The predatory hum inside my chest ceased, replaced by the violently familiar, racing rhythm of my own accelerated biological heartbeat. The bronze needles retracted into the chair’s frame with a hydraulic hiss, spitting crimson fluid across my bare arms as the mechanical grip unlocked.
I collapsed forward, gasping for air, straight into Marco’s chest. His arms wrapped around me tightly, lifting me clean off the bronze throne just as the dais beneath us groaned.
The water was rising with terrifying speed. Lake Michigan was claiming the glass citadel.
"We have to move!" Silas shouted from the mezzanine stairs. He was staggering upward, clutching his bleeding eye socket with one hand and hauling an assault rifle with the other. "The bulkhead supports are failing! The lake pressure is crushing the lower tunnels!"
Across the room, the aquatic cradle shuddered.
The translucent fluid inside the tank began to drain, sucked away by automated secondary protocols. The pale, sutured figure of Samuel Bellini twitched. His artificial sternum ignited with a virulent green luminescent flare, matching the emergency lights flashing across the ceiling.
The glass of the preservation tank cracked.
May you like
A long, spiderweb fracture raced down the reinforced acrylic. A hand—pale, veined with subcutaneous dark circuitry, its fingers long and skeletal—slammed flat against the inside of the glass.
The dead patriarch's eyes opened. They were milky white, blind, and burning with machine intelligence.
