Chapter 37 - The Glass Citadel
"Vance, hold your fire!" Andrew shouted as the boat’s gunner racked the heavy .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the bow. "If they detonate near our hull, the shockwave alone will kill Chloe!"
"He’s not firing," Vance observed grimly, throttling back the interceptor as the massive black hull of the *Leviathan* loomed over us like an iron cliff. "Look at the water level."
A massive hydraulic sea door at the stern of the yacht was slowly groaning open, revealing a floodlit internal tender bay. Armed guards in black tactical gear lined the catwalks, but their rifles were lowered to the low-ready position.
"He wants us inside," I said, clutching Chloe against my chest with one arm, my other hand wrapped around the grip of the concealed pistol Andrew had given me. "He knows Chloe is dying. He knows we have to bring her to the lab."
"It's a trap, Evelyn," Andrew said, his eyes scanning the open bay. "The moment we enter that hull, the sea doors will close behind us. We’ll be trapped in international waters."
"Then we spring it," I replied, staring up at the gleaming letters spelling out *LEVIATHAN* across the stern. "Chloe has forty-five minutes left, Andrew. We don't have a choice."
Vance nodded to his tactical operators. "We go in hot. Team alpha secures the tender bay. Team bravo secures the medical corridor with Andrew and Evelyn. Shoot anything that resists."
The interceptor glided into the illuminated bay, the water churning around the docking slip. The instant our hull bumped against the rubber bumpers, the hydraulic sea door behind us began to screech shut, sealing out the Atlantic and locking us inside a cavernous steel chamber.
*Clang! Clang! Clang!*
"Federal agents! Drop your weapons!" Vance’s operators roared, vaulting onto the metal grates, weapons raised.
The yacht’s guards didn't fire. They slowly raised their hands, stepping back into the open corridor.
Stepping forward from behind the line of mercenaries was a man in a rumpled white lab coat, his hair wildly disheveled, his hands shaking violently.
"Marcus!" Andrew shouted, leaping onto the gangway.
"Andrew... thank God you brought her," Dr. Marcus Gable gasped, rushing forward, completely ignoring the federal gun barrels aimed at his chest. "How long has she been under the cryo-brake?"
"Over three hours," I said, shoving my way past the soldiers and placing Chloe in Marcus’s arms. "Her pulse is down to twelve beats a minute, Marcus! Save her!"
Marcus touched Chloe’s cold neck, his eyes widening in terror. "She's slipping into irreversible cardiac arrest! We need the perfusion centrifuge in the main theater immediately! Follow me!"
We broke into a dead run down the sterile, white-paneled corridors of the superyacht.
The ship was not decorated like a luxury vessel. There were no wood veneers or fine art. It was an advanced offshore medical facility—walls lined with stainless steel, biometric airlocks, and rows of liquid nitrogen storage tanks housing unlabeled genetic material.
We rounded a corner and burst through a set of pneumatic glass double doors into the primary surgical theater.
The room was vast, dominated by two surgical tables surrounded by banks of heart-lung bypass machines, robotic surgical arms, and holographic monitoring displays.
Lying on the table on the far left, already intubated, his small chest hooked to an array of humming monitors, was the clone—Leo. The boy was conscious, his cold, grey eyes turning toward us as we entered. He didn't look afraid. He looked at Chloe with a terrifying, serene acceptance.
And sitting in a motorized wheelchair between the two operating tables, wrapped in an ivory cashmere blanket, hooked to a mechanical ventricular assist pump that hissed and wheezed with every artificial beat, sat Jonathan Sterling.
The patriarch of the Sterling dynasty.
His face was gaunt, his skin the color of old parchment stretched tightly over a skull, but his eyes—those burning, predatory grey eyes—were as sharp and malevolent as the day he had destroyed my life.
May you like
"Welcome home, Evelyn," Jonathan whispered, his raspy voice amplified by a microphone pinned to his collar. "You're just in time for the family reunion."
***
