Chapter 39 - The Shattered Scalpel
"Charge the paddles to seventy!" Marcus screamed, his voice breaking. "We’re losing her completely!"
*BEEEEEEEEEEEP.*
The sound of Chloe's flatline tore through my soul like a razor. I looked at Jonathan. I looked at the titanium vial in his withered, claw-like hand.
"Do it," I whispered, the words tasting like ash and poison. "Connect them."
"Evelyn, no!" Andrew yelled. "If you connect that cross-perfusion line, the siphon will bleed her dry the moment Jonathan's surgeons engage the pump!"
"She is dead right now, Andrew!" I screamed, wheeling on him with wild, bloodshot eyes. "Look at the screen! She has zero pulse! Connect the lines!"
Marcus moved with frantic speed. He pulled the thick, clear tubing from the cross-perfusion console, snapping the arterial lines into the pre-existing ports in Chloe’s neck and Leo’s subclavian vein.
"Lines connected!" Marcus shouted. "Jonathan, the vial!"
Jonathan smiled—a triumphant, sickening smirk of absolute victory. He tossed the titanium vial onto the surgical tray. "Inject it. And start the harvesting sequence."
Marcus grabbed the vial, drew the glowing blue fluid into a large syringe, and slammed it into the central port of the cross-perfusion line.
He flipped the master switch on the console.
The heavy peristaltic pumps began to turn with a wet, rhythmic *thwack-thwack-thwack*.
The blue fluid shot down the tubing, splitting evenly as it surged into both children simultaneously.
For five agonizing seconds, the surgical theater held its breath. The only sound was the hum of the ship’s engines and the hiss of Jonathan’s mechanical pump.
Then, Chloe’s monitor spiked.
*Beep.*
*...Beep. Beep.*
The flatline broke. A weak, fragile sinus rhythm began to trace across the green screen.
On the other table, Leo let out a sharp cry as the synthetic enzymes flooded his veins. The faint violet lines that had plagued Chloe suddenly blossomed across Leo’s chest, the biological transfer taking hold.
"It’s working," Jonathan whispered, his eyes wide with unholy hunger, rising trembling from his wheelchair, his hands reaching toward the operating tables. "The graft is stabilizing! Initiate thoracic incision! Open the boy!"
The two robotic surgical arms suspended from the ceiling whirred to life, laser scalpels humming with high-frequency ultraviolet light, descending toward Leo’s small, bare chest.
"No!"
The cry didn't come from me. It didn't come from Andrew.
It came from Leo.
The boy looked at Chloe, who had just opened her eyes. Chloe, weak, shivering, turned her head toward him across the narrow gap between the tables.
"Brother...?" Chloe whispered, her tiny voice cutting through the mechanical hum of the room. "Why are you crying?"
That single word—*Brother*—shattered six years of psychological conditioning in a fraction of a second.
Leo’s eyes widened with pure, primal terror. The delusion of "glorious sacrifice" vanished, replaced by the instinct of a terrified little boy who realized he was about to be butchered by the man he called grandfather.
"Grandpa... no!" Leo screamed, thrashing against the leather restraints holding his wrists to the table. "Don't cut me! Please, Grandpa, don't cut me!"
"Hold him still!" Jonathan snarled, striking the console with his cane. "Engage the paralytic! Cut him open!"
"You touch that boy and I’ll blow your head off!" Andrew roared, lunging forward with his pistol.
*BANG!*
A shot rang out, but it wasn't Andrew’s gun.
From the observation gallery above the theater, Jonathan’s personal head of security fired down. The heavy rifle round struck Andrew in the abdomen, spinning him around and throwing him violently against the glass partition.
"Andrew!" I screamed.
Jonathan turned toward me, his face twisted into a demonic mask of fury. He pulled a compact derringer from his cashmere blanket and leveled it straight between my eyes.
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"You have been a disease in my family from the day you married my son," Jonathan hissed, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Die knowing that your daughter will spend the rest of her life in an iron cage, feeding my heart with her blood!"
***
