Chapter 67 - Shadows Over Kyiv
William’s hand dropped the blade. It clattered against the wet concrete.
He slumped forward, his heavy, scarred frame collapsing into Claire’s arms. The neural cocktail flooding his system was crashing, fighting against the cybernetic overrides that were trying to seize control of his motor functions again.
“Claire…” he choked, coughing up blackish bile. “The head… the chip in my neck… it has… it has everything. Sterling’s backers… the senators… Margaret…”
“Don't speak,” Claire ordered, her battlefield instincts instantly suppressing her grief. She slung William’s massive, six-foot-two arm over her shoulders. Her knees buckled under the weight, but she locked her core, teeth bared in an animalistic snarl of sheer willpower. “We move. Now.”
She hauled him toward the secondary escape tunnel—a rusted maintenance hatch that led toward the Pripyat drainage system. Behind them, the primary server bank exploded in a concussive plume of orange fire. Fuel lines severed, spraying burning diesel across the chamber.
William groaned, trying to push her away. “Leave me… I’m dead already, Claire. They cut me up… there’s nothing left inside.”
“Shut your mouth, Lieutenant,” Claire barked, the absolute authority of Operator 187 ringing through the collapsing tunnel. “You don't get to die in a Soviet sewer. You’re going back to Arlington—walking on your own damn feet.”
They staggered through three feet of freezing, foul-smelling swamp water as charges detonated along the ceiling above them. Concrete slabs weighing tons crashed down behind them, sealing the observation chamber forever. Dust and smoke filled their lungs, choking out the remaining oxygen.
Up ahead, a circle of dim, grey daylight marked the drainage culvert exiting into the marshland.
Claire kicked the rusted iron grate free, dragging William out into the falling snow.
They collapsed onto the frozen reeds. Fifty yards away, perched on an elevated asphalt road above the tree line, sat a customized Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter, its rotors spinning up into a deafening whir.
Standing on the tarmac next to the open cabin door was Director Sterling, flanked by four heavily armed bodyguards. Sterling was holding a satellite phone to his ear, gesturing frantically toward the sky.
“He thinks he’s getting away,” Claire murmured, her chest heaving as she laid William gently against an embankment. She pulled her sniper rifle from her back. The receiver was scratched, the barrel caked in mud, but the optics were clear.
William reached out, his synthetic-reinforced hand clamping over hers. “Sterling… has the override trigger for the kill switch in my spine. If he reaches twenty thousand feet… the failsafe detonates.”
Claire looked down at him. Her eyes were twin pools of cold, absolute death.
May you like
“He’s not reaching twenty feet,” she said.
***
