Chapter 85 - The Clockmaker's Loyalists
Marco exhaled slowly, resting his head back against the concrete. "The suture never closes in the dark, Luca. It only waits for the thread."
There was a sharp intake of breath from the darkness. A warm yellow halogen flashlight snapped on—not the blinding sapphire of Vance’s drones, but honest, battery-powered amber.
The man holding the shotgun was in his late sixties, clad in grease-stained coveralls and a heavy wool pea coat. His face was weathered like old leather, his gray beard trimmed with surgical precision. Around his neck hung an antique brass magnifying loupe.
"Marco?" the old man whispered, lowering the barrel. "Dio mio... you're alive. The radio said the Leviathan imploded off the shelf."
"Luca Bellini," Marco said, offering a weak smile as he struggled to stand. I supported his weight. "Laura, this is Luca. My father's cousin. The master horologist who machined the casings for Prototype Zero before Samuel hid the project."
Luca approached us, his sharp eyes instantly darting to Marco's chest, then to me, taking in my bloodied nurse's uniform and the surgical tools in my tactical kit.
"A doctor?" Luca asked.
"A trauma nurse," I replied. "And right now, Marco is three hours away from total circulatory collapse if we don't recalibrate his intake valve."
"Follow me, both of you," Luca ordered, turning down an intersecting tunnel marked with fading spray-painted symbols. "The sleepers are patrolling every surface intersection between here and the river. They've barricaded the bridges. They're marching thousands of citizens toward the water crib through the lower levels of the train stations."
"Why the crib?" I asked as we hurried through the narrow tunnel.
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"Because the Black Sun protocol requires bio-processing power," Luca explained grimly over his shoulder. "Vance’s AI core can’t maintain control over six sectors without organic nodes to calculate the quantum encryption. He is consolidating forty thousand people into the deep-water pump station to act as a living mainframe."
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