By the time my husband finally came home, our three-year-old daughter had already been buried / Chapter 108 / 121

Chapter 108 - The Gilded Siphon

"Her destiny is to go to kindergarten," I snarled. "Her destiny is to scrape her knees on playgrounds and eat ice cream on summer afternoons! Not to be the meat puppet for a dead billionaire's ego!"

"Maternal sentimentality," Victoria sneered, gesturing to the synthetic drones. "The fatal flaw of the natural human. Kill the mother. Secure the asset."

The chrome drones raised their wrist-mounted rotary barrels.

"Clara, hang on to my back!" I screamed.

I didn't try to outshoot four computerized firing systems. I threw my entire weight against the bridge's side railing, pulling a magnetic fragmentation grenade from Julian's harness, biting the pin out with my teeth, and slapping it onto the primary suspension cable supporting the catwalk.

"What are you doing?!" Victoria shrieked, her arrogant composure instantly shattering into wild panic. "You'll drop us all into the coolant abyss!"

"Then I’ll see you in hell!" I roared.

The grenade detonated.

The heavy steel cable severed with a sound like a cracking whip. The suspension bridge instantly lost its left anchor, tipping violently at a forty-five-degree angle over the bottomless chasm.

The two forward drones lost their magnetic footing, sliding down the slick metal grating with metallic shrieks before plunging into the darkness below.

Victoria lunged backward, catching herself on the doorframe of the observation chamber, screaming as her obsidian remote slipped from her fingers, tumbling over the edge.

I dug the combat knife deep into the metal mesh of the tilted bridge floor, using it as an ice ax to arrest our slide. Clara’s small arms were locked around my neck with desperate, terrifying strength, her face buried in the crook of my shoulder.

"Mommy! Don't let go!"

"Never!" I grunted, my shoulder wound screaming in agony as my muscles tore under the strain. "I will never let you go!"

With a savage pull of my core, I dragged ourselves upward along the tilted grating, reaching the secondary maintenance gangway that led directly beneath the central observation room.

Victoria was scrambling back onto her feet inside the chamber, frantically slamming her palm against the emergency manual synchronization console.

"System override!" she screamed at the automated terminals. "Initiate the Alpha upload immediately! Burn the mother's clearance! Burn it all!"

I kicked through the reinforced glass window of the control booth, raining sharp shards onto the linoleum floor.

Victoria turned, drawing a snub-nosed ceramic pistol from her coat, but I was already upon her.

I didn't use a gun. I hit her with the full force of my body, driving her against the bank of monitors. The pistol clattered across the floor. I grabbed her by the throat with my bare, bloodied hand, slamming her head back into the mainframe display until the glass cracked beneath her skull.

"Where is the master coolant valve?" I demanded, my face inches from hers, my breath coming in ragged, savage gasps.

"You're... too late..." Victoria choked, a bloody smile spreading across her lips as she pointed a trembling finger at the central glass pillar in the middle of the room.

Inside the pillar, a sphere of swirling silver energy was expanding. Suspended within it was a glowing, holographic avatar of Arthur Sterling's consciousness.

"The continental broadcast has begun," Victoria gasped. "The children... are waking up."