Chapter 62 - The Father's Scalpel
The concussive wave knocked Richard Vance back two steps, his immaculate posture breaking as the white light of his master unit flickered erratically.
Marco surged through the smoking breach, driven by pure adrenaline and the failing embers of his artificial valve. He didn't hesitate. He raised his heavy tactical pistol and emptied the magazine into Vance’s torso.
The rounds struck with hollow, sickening thuds—not the sound of bullets piercing flesh, but of lead flattening against dense, reinforced ballistic alloy. Vance took the impacts without falling, his synthetic harness absorbing the kinetic force, though black, viscous fluid seeped from the torn fabric around his ribs.
“Marco Bellini,” Vance murmured, tilting his head as though observing an unruly specimen under glass. “Still beating with my stolen rhythm. Still masquerading as a prince on borrowed blood.”
“You talk too much for a corpse,” Marco snarled, dropping the empty weapon and lunging forward with a combat blade drawn.
“Marco, don't!” I screamed, pushing myself up from the freezing floor. “The tether—if you damage his master unit while we're linked, the feedback will fry our brains!”
It was too late. Marco closed the gap, driving the blade directly into Vance’s exposed carotid conduit. But Vance was faster than any human could be. He caught Marco’s wrist in a grip that crunched bone, twisting it with cold, calculated leverage. Marco grunted in agony, dropping to one knee as the blade clattered into the rising water.
“You have your father’s arrogance, boy,” Vance whispered, leaning down. “Samuel sat in that chair for eighteen years, listening to the ticking of a legacy he could never master. He thought that by hiding the master key in the leather cushions, he could protect you from me. But he only delayed the inevitable.”
Vance pressed the glowing white device against Marco’s chest.
A horrific scream tore from Marco’s throat as electric arcs danced across his skin, illuminating his skeletal structure in grotesque detail. His eyes widened, pupils dilating into black voids as his artificial heart began to spin in reverse, forced into a fatal tachycardic loop.
“Stop it!” I threw myself at Vance, ignoring the terror that screamed inside my instincts. I didn't reach for a weapon. I reached for the medical suture kit still strapped to my thigh, pulling out the obsidian scalpel I had recovered from the catacombs.
With all the strength left in my trembling arms, I drove the scalpel straight into the dorsal port of Vance’s synthetic harness—the exact junction where his cryogenic life-support routed into his central nervous system.
A deafening static screech erupted from the master unit. Vance froze, his grip on Marco slackening as his pale face twisted into an expression of genuine shock.
“You… learned the anatomy,” Vance whispered, staggering backward.
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“I’m a nurse, Richard,” I spat through the bitter cold, tasting copper in my mouth. “I know exactly where the nerves run.”
***
