Chapter 44 - The Subterranean Breach
The child in the pod gasped, coughing up thick, clear amniotic fluid, her hands clawing instinctively at the rubber seals of the opening chamber. Her eyes, pale blue and terrified, opened to the flashing red lights of the crumbling laboratory.
Marcus stood frozen between the two identical children.
On the floor beside him, his Chloe was breathing, her color returning as the inversion agent neutralized the poison. In the pod, Sarah’s biological daughter was shivering violently, hypothermic shock threatening to stop her heart within minutes of thawing.
"Two of them..." Marcus breathed, horror and profound paternal grief colliding in his chest. "God forgive us, there are two of them."
"Marcus!" Eleanor screamed from through the mist. She emerged near the steel staircase, her pistol leveled with both hands. Her aristocratic poise was entirely gone, replaced by the rabid desperation of a woman watching her life’s masterpiece shatter. "Step away from the pod! That child is the rightful Vance heir! She is worth everything!"
"She's a child, Mother!" Marcus yelled, stepping between Eleanor’s gun and the pod, while Chloe lay hidden behind his legs on the floor. "She isn't an inheritance! She's my daughter!"
"She is my creation!" Eleanor shrieked, pulling the trigger.
The round tore through Marcus’s left shoulder.
The impact spun him around, a fiery flare of agony ripping through his collarbone. Blood instantly soaked his torn flannel shirt. Marcus fell to one knee, groaning through clenched teeth, but he refused to drop.
Eleanor walked forward, her eyes locked on the thawing child in the pod. "I spent forty years building an empire that politicians kneel to. I will not let a spineless, sentimental weakling like you hand it over to the state."
She raised the gun to point it directly at Marcus's head, standing over him, her face illuminated by the blood-red strobe of the vault's alarm.
"Goodbye, Marcus."
Before her finger could squeeze the trigger, a tiny hand reached out from beneath the console and gripped Eleanor's silk ankle.
Eleanor gasped, startled by the touch, her aim faltering for half a second.
It was Chloe. Her eyes were open, bright, burning with life, the antidote coursing through her veins.
"Don't touch my daddy," Chloe whispered.
May you like
In that split second of distraction, Marcus lunged upward.
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