Everyone warned Laura never to touch Marco Bellini’s father’s chair, but when his heart device started beeping, she cut it open and uncovered a terrifying secret… / Chapter 59 / 100

Chapter 59 - The Harvest Engine

The revelation hit me with the force of an avalanche.

My entire medical career. My uncanny ability to map circulatory pathways with impossible precision. The strange electrical sensitivity in my fingertips that my mentors had called a 'god-given gift.' It had all been engineered. I was not an accidental participant in Samuel Bellini's game.

I was the biological catalyst they had spent thirty years cultivating.

"Samuel knew it," Helen continued, stepping toward an elevated central console that housed a massive obsidian pillar—the Harvest Engine. "That’s why he hired you as his private nurse on his deathbed. He didn't want to escape us; he wanted to trap us. He knew that the moment you cut open his chair and grafted his implant to Marco's, the biological circuit would complete itself."

She tapped the touchscreen of the central pedestal. A holographic projection of my thoracic cage flared to life above the console, rotating alongside a scan of Marco's.

"Prototype Zero and the Bellini Conduit are now fully calibrated," Helen announced. "Once I extract your hearts and place them into the core harness of the Harvest Engine, the global network will synchronize. Three thousand world leaders will bow to the Founders' Council, or their hearts will cease to beat with the press of a single button."

"You're not taking anything from her," Marco roared.

He moved with blinding mafia-bred violence. In a split second, he lunged forward, grabbing the barrel of the nearest guard's rifle, twisting it violently to snap the soldier's wrist, and drove the butt of the weapon into the man's throat.

The bridge erupted into chaos.

Flechette rounds ricocheted off the reinforced glass viewport. Marco dove behind a composite terminal, firing the captured rifle with brutal accuracy, dropping two of the Council guards in rapid succession.

"Laura! The console!" Marco shouted, pinning down the remaining guard behind an iron stanchion.

I didn't run. The surgeon in me took control of the terror.

I vaulted onto the platform toward the Harvest Engine. Helen drew a high-voltage neural prod from her pocket, lunging at me with venomous fury. "You foolish girl! You are throwing away godhood!"

I sidestepped her strike, using the agility my father had supposedly built into my bones. I caught her wrist, twisted it using an orthopedic joint lock, and slammed her down onto the edge of the console.

Her prod clattered across the floor.

With my free hand, I pulled the surgical scalpel from my inner pocket—the obsidian blade Silas had given me in the catacombs—and drove it straight into the primary coolant manifold of the Harvest Engine.

Supercooled fluid sprayed across the electronics. Alarms began to shriek across the entire vessel, bathing the bridge in flashing amber strobes.