Chapter 38 - Blood Siphon
"Get away from her, Jonathan!" Andrew roared, raising his sidearm and aiming it directly at his father's forehead.
Jonathan didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. He merely smiled—a ghastly, yellowed grin that revealed teeth stained with medication.
"Shoot me, Andrew," Jonathan rasped, coughing weakly into a silk handkerchief. "Pull the trigger. If my heart stops before the transplant begins, the automatic fail-safe aboard this vessel will release two thousand liters of seawater into this bay. We will all drown at the bottom of the Atlantic. Including your precious Chloe."
"Andrew, lower the gun!" Dr. Gable yelled, already laying Chloe onto the second surgical table. "She’s flatlining! Evelyn, hold her head still!"
I threw my weapon aside and threw myself across Chloe’s table.
The cardiac monitor attached to my daughter began to emit a long, continuous, agonizing tone.
*BEEEEEEEEEEEP.*
"Defibrillator! Charge to fifty joules!" Marcus barked, slapping two pediatric pads onto Chloe’s tiny chest. "Clear!"
*Thump!*
Chloe’s small body arched off the table. The flatline continued its relentless screech.
"Marcus!" I screamed, grabbing his lapels, tears blinding me. "Bring her back! You promised me!"
"I need the synthetic reverse-catalyst!" Marcus shouted, his hands frantically rifling through an open medical refrigerator. "Jonathan, where did you put the blue ampoules? Where are they?!"
Jonathan leaned forward in his wheelchair, his withered hand resting on the armrest. In his palm, he held a sealed titanium vial filled with the luminescent blue antidote.
"The antidote is right here, Evelyn," Jonathan whispered softly. "And it belongs to Chloe. But nothing in this world is free. You know that better than anyone."
"What do you want, you monster?!" I sobbed, dropping to my knees before his wheelchair, pride and dignity burned away by the singular, desperate desire to hear my daughter breathe again. "Tell me what you want! Take my heart! Take my blood! Let her live!"
"Your blood is useless to me now, Evelyn," Jonathan sneered, his cold eyes glittering with madness. "Your tissues have degraded with age. Only the pure, uncorrupted stem cells of the next generation can bond Leo's cloned heart to my failing vascular system."
He pointed a skeletal finger toward the boy lying on the adjacent table.
"Leo has been prepped," Jonathan said. "His heart is genetically flawless. But without Chloe’s marrow enzymes coursing through his coronary arteries at the moment of extraction, the graft will fail within six hours. She must be hooked to the cross-perfusion siphon. Now."
"Cross-perfusion...?" Andrew gasped, his voice trembling with horror. "You want to link their circulatory systems while you cut the boy open?!"
"It will save Chloe's life," Jonathan stated plainly, holding up the vial of antidote. "I inject the catalyst into the cross-line. Chloe wakes up, her marrow floods the circuit with the stabilizing enzyme, and my surgical team takes Leo's heart. Chloe lives. Leo fulfills his destiny. And I continue to guide this family into the next century."
"And the boy dies!" I screamed, looking over at Leo.
The eight-year-old boy turned his head on the surgical pillow. He looked at me, then at Chloe's pale, motionless face on the adjacent cot.
"I am not afraid to die, Aunt Evelyn," Leo said quietly, a single tear rolling down his porcelain cheek. "Grandpa said I was made for this. If I don't give him my heart, I was never real at all."
The monstrous psychological horror of what Jonathan Sterling had done struck me with the force of a tidal wave. He hadn't just created a clone; he had systematically hollowed out a child's soul, conditioning him to walk willingly to the slaughterhouse.
"He is a child, Jonathan!" I screamed, rising to my feet, my fists clenched. "He is Julian's son! He is your own flesh and blood!"
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"He is a tool!" Jonathan roared back, his mechanical pump whirring furiously as his blood pressure spiked. "Everything I built, every billion dollars, every political empire was created so the Sterling name would never die! Now decide, Evelyn! Twenty seconds before Chloe’s brain cells begin to starve! Do you want your daughter... or do you want to die with your morals?!"
***
