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 65 / 100

Chapter 65 - The Sunken Crypt

The world was spinning. Up became down, left became right, as the heavy steel sphere plunged into the deep. Marco and I were thrown against the padded walls, bruised and breathless, until with a violent, reverberating *THUD*, the capsule ground to a halt.

Silence followed.

It was an oppressive, suffocating silence, broken only by the steady, rhythmic *drip-drip-drip* of condensation running down the cold rivets, and the synchronized, frantic beating of our hearts.

*Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*

The dual purple glow beneath our skin cast long, eerie shadows across the curved steel interior. Marco was slumped against the bulkhead, his face ash-white, his breathing shallow and rapid. His left pant leg was soaked in dark arterial blood.

“Marco…” I dropped to my knees beside him, my nurse’s training cutting through the shock and dizziness. “Let me see it.”

“I’m fine,” he lied, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles twitched. “Just… caught the bone.”

I used my shears to cut away the soaked fabric. The fibula had fractured, puncturing through the skin in a jagged compound wound. More alarming was the pulse in his foot—it was faint, disappearing. The trauma was putting an impossible strain on his bio-mechanical heart, which was already fighting the cold.

“Your valve is fluttering,” I said, listening to the metallic click inside his chest with my ear pressed against his sternum. “If I don't set this fracture and stem the hemorrhage, your heart is going to go into hypovolemic shock. And if you flatline, my device flatlines with you.”

“Then do it, Doc,” he whispered, offering a bloody, faint smile. “You’ve cut me open once before. What’s one more time?”

I reached into my emergency medical kit, pulling out a sterile compression bandage, a tourniquet, and a syringe of synthetic clotting factor I had salvaged from the Leviathan’s medical bay.

“Bite on this,” I ordered, shoving a rubber handle from an emergency wrench into his mouth.

He took it. I didn't hesitate. With precise, ruthless leverage, I realigned the shattered bone. Marco let out a muffled scream through the rubber, his knuckles turning pure white as he gripped my shoulder, but he didn't pull away. I rapidly injected the clotting agent into the wound bed, wrapping the pressure bandage with tight, disciplined turns until the bleeding halted.

As I tied off the final knot, the capsule groaned.

A green light flickered on the overhead console, accompanied by the hiss of pneumatic seals breaking.

“What is that?” Marco whispered, spitting out the wrench, his voice raspy.

I looked through the thick glass viewport of the capsule. We hadn't crashed into the muddy bottom of the lake. We had landed in an illuminated, pressurized airlock.