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 97 / 100

Chapter 97 - The Bloodline Override

Gunfire erupted from the corridor.

Luca’s rifle barked in rhythmic, controlled pairs, the concussive blasts ringing inside the iron chamber. "They're coming in numbers, doc!" he shouted, empty brass casings clattering across the floor. "Heavy constructs! Heavily armored!"

Outside the vault, the mechanized screech of metal saws and hydraulic pistons grew louder. A heavy round blew a chunk of concrete out of the wall above Luca’s head, showering him with dust. He returned fire, dropping a charging automaton with a clean shot through its neck articulation, but two more took its place.

In the center of the room, my fingers were inside Marco’s chest, bathed in his blood and hot hydraulic fluid.

My forceps found the microscopic obsidian lever.

"Now!" I cried, twisting the instrument forty-five degrees clockwise.

There was a crisp, internal *snick*.

Instantly, the violent clicking in Marco’s chest ceased. His body went limp, his head dropping backward as his eyes rolled into his skull. His biological heart took over—weak, fluttering, but entirely disconnected from the monstrous turbine towering above us.

Across the chamber, the massive obsidian core gave an unearthly shriek of protest.

Without the bio-rhythmic signal from Marco's chest to regulate its magnetic field, the containment rings began to wobble. The smooth, hypnotic spin of the black stone disc broke into a violent, violent wobble, throwing arcs of white-hot static into the bulkheads.

*“WARNING: BIOLOGICAL UMBILICAL SEVERED,”* the synthetic voice of Samuel Bellini blared from the failing speakers, warped with distortion. *“EMERGENCY SYSTEM DESYNCHRONIZATION. INITIATING FAILSAFE OVERRIDE: FULL TECTONIC DRAINAGE.”*

"It didn't shut down!" Luca yelled, retreating into the chamber and kicking the vault door's manual release. The heavy iron door slammed shut, severing the torso of an automaton that was trying to squeeze through, but the sound of heavy blows immediately began battering the outside of the steel plate. "It went into auto-destruct!"

"It isn't destroying itself," Marco choked out, forcing himself to speak despite the open wound in his chest, which I was frantically clamping with hemostats. "It's dumping its energy... into the lake bed. It’s going to collapse the foundation!"

I looked up at the console. The amber monitors were flashing violently with tectonic readings. Deep subterranean charges, placed by Samuel Bellini decades ago into the limestone strata below Chicago, were arming one by one.

"We have to vent the main reactor directly into the intake chamber," I said, reading the schematics flashing on the brass-framed dials. "If we dump the cold water directly into the obsidian core, the thermal shock will shatter the stone before the charges can receive the detonation pulse!"

"And what happens to this ship when the core shatters?" Luca asked, wiping blood from a shrapnel cut on his cheek.

Marco hauled himself to his feet, leaning his entire weight against me, his hand clamped over the surgical dressing I had slapped across his torn sternum.