MY HUSBAND KICKED ME TO THE FLOOR TO PROTECT HIS MISTRESS—BUT WHEN I PLAYED A SECRET RECORDING, HIS OWN LOVER TURNED AGAINST HIM! WHAT SHE HEARD LEFT EVERYONE SPEECHLESS... / Chapter 29 / 51

Chapter 29 - The Price of Air

From the high rafters above the refrigeration unit, two tactical flashbangs detonated in a blinding roar of magnesium and concussive sound.

Victoria shrieked, disoriented by the blast, her first shot discharging harmlessly into the concrete floor.

In that split second of blindness, Sophia didn't retreat. Channeling every remaining drop of adrenaline in her failing body, she lunged forward, driving the tip of her heavy metal cane into Victoria’s kneecap.

Victoria collapsed with a sharp cry of agony.

From the plastic curtains, Vanessa and Miller breached, weapons barking in synchronized double-taps, instantly dropping Victoria’s two private security guards before they could raise their submachine guns.

"Secure the vial!" Miller roared.

Victoria rolled across the frost-covered floor, her coat flying open as she whipped a secondary compact pistol from her ankle holster. She didn't aim at Sophia. She aimed directly at the glass centrifuge holding the nearly completed antidote.

"If I don't leave with it, nobody leaves!" Victoria screamed.

*BANG.*

Vanessa’s round struck Victoria’s right shoulder, spinning her around and sending her pistol clattering across the ice.

Victoria hit the floor, sobbing in rage and pain, clutching her bleeding shoulder. Miller was on her in a heartbeat, pinning her neck to the frozen concrete with his combat boot and wrenching her arms behind her back into steel cuffs.

Sophia staggered to the medical console. The centrifuge had completed its final cycle with a soft mechanical chime.

Inside sat two sealed, cryogenic autoinjectors: Phase Two and Phase Three. The complete, unadulterated cure.

"Dr. Hayes!" Vanessa shouted, sprinting to Sophia’s side just as Sophia’s knees gave out completely.

Sophia hit the floor, her vision fading into a thick, suffocating gray tunnel. Her pulse monitor let out a continuous, piercing alarm tone—sustained ventricular fibrillation. Her lungs refused to pull in oxygen; the neural pathways were collapsing under the final threshold of the toxin.

"Sophia! Stay with me!" Vanessa cried, tears spilling over her cheeks as she pulled Sophia’s head onto her lap. "Doctor, do it now!"

Dr. Hayes slid across the ice on his knees, tearing open the cryogenic rack. With trembling hands, he slammed the Phase Two injector directly into Sophia’s subclavian vein, followed three agonizing seconds later by the Phase Three neural antagonist into her carotid artery.

For five terrifying seconds, nothing happened.

Sophia’s chest remained motionless. Her eyes rolled back into her head. The digital monitor flatlined into a solid, unbroken whine.

"Clear!" Hayes yelled, preparing a portable defibrillator.

"Sophia, don't you dare die!" Vanessa screamed, pounding her fist against the concrete beside Sophia’s limp shoulder. "You fought too hard for this! BREATHE!"

A sudden, violent gasp tore through Sophia’s throat.

Her back arched off the icy floor as pure air rushed back into her suffocating lungs. Her heart gave a massive, shuddering thud, followed by another, and then another—ragged, uneven, but undeniably beating.