Chapter 45 - The Memory Graft
"He's awake," I whispered, cold dread wrapping around my spine like a frozen shroud. "Marco... that isn't a ghost in the server. He preserved his flesh."
"That isn't my father," Marco said through gritted teeth. His hand remained firm against my waist, holding me up as my legs trembled from the residual shock of the neural interface. "My father died eighteen years ago. Whatever is in that tank is an abomination he built out of Arthur's work."
*CRACK.*
The containment glass blew outward. The torrent of amber preservation fluid met the black lake water in a swirling vortex of chemical sludge. The figure inside tumbled onto the submerged metal grating, rising slowly, unnaturally to its feet like a puppet pulled by steel cables.
From the throat of the reanimated patriarch came a metallic, dual-toned rasp that sounded like two voices speaking over an open radio channel:
*"Marco... my disappointing heir."*
The reanimated corpse of Samuel Bellini stepped through the rising water. His movements were jerky, driven by subcutaneous hydraulic actuators embedded along his spine. In his chest, the twin core to Prototype Zero spun within a brass-and-platinum cage, emitting a high-frequency whistle that caused the glass walls of the atrium to vibrate violently.
"Marco, look out!" I screamed.
Samuel didn't use a firearm. With horrifying speed that defied biological physics, the figure surged through the waist-deep water, its pale hand shooting forward like a piston.
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Marco raised his arm to block, but the kinetic force struck him like a freight train. He was lifted off his feet and hurled across the room, crashing heavily against the bronze chair he had fought so hard to save me from. The obsidian scalpel went flying into the dark water, disappearing beneath the foam.
Marco slumped against the base of the throne, coughing up blood, his hand clawing at his chest as his own regulator began to whine in fatal dissonance.
