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 83 / 100

Chapter 83 - The Sleeper Grid

"Run," Marco said, shoving me toward the service entrance of the Grand Ballroom.

The sleepers didn't shout or raise weapons; they simply accelerated their pace, breaking into an eerie, mechanical sprint. Their movements were jerky yet horrifyingly efficient, driven by artificial adrenaline and electrical pulses forced through their muscles by Vance's implants.

I slammed my shoulder into the maintenance door, breaking the frozen deadbolt, and pulled Marco inside just as the first sleeper—a young man wearing a courier's uniform—crashed against the steel exterior with inhuman force. The glass in the door's inspection port cracked from the impact of his bare forehead, yet he didn't even recoil; he immediately began ramming the door again, over and over, completely indifferent to pain.

"They won't stop until their bone structure gives out," Marco warned, leaning heavily against a stack of wooden crates in the darkened delivery corridor. "The protocol bypasses pain receptors entirely."

"We can't fight an entire city of innocent patients, Marco!" I said, searching through my emergency trauma kit. "They’re victims, just like your father’s initial subjects. There has to be a frequency that dampens the carrier wave."

"There is," he said, breathing hard. He unbuttoned his torn coat, revealing the exposed casing of Prototype Zero. The intricate brass-and-obsidian mechanism in his chest was spinning at a frantic RPM, radiating heat that melted the frost off his collar. "The Sovereign Core beneath the city holds the primary transmitter. But the broadcast isn't originating from the Sears Tower or the old broadcast relays. The primary antenna is anchored in the offshore water intake crib—the two-mile crib Samuel built in seventy-four."

"The water crib?" I echoed. "The stone fortress out in the lake?"

"It was never just an intake for drinking water," Marco explained grimly. "My father constructed it as a deep-water relay station, grounded directly into the limestone bedrock beneath the lake bed. It connects to the subterranean tunnels beneath the Loop. If Vance’s automated systems have seized the crib, the signal will broadcast uninterrupted until every node burns out its host."

Outside, the banging on the steel door ceased abruptly. The unnatural silence returned.

I crept to the cracked glass and peered out. The sleepers had stepped back into formation. They weren't trying to break down the door anymore. Instead, they were standing in a wide semicircle, joining hands.

Through their synchronized palms, a brilliant blue arc of electrical current leaped from person to person, creating a living resonant circuit that focused directly on the steel door's hinges.