Chapter 47 - Mother's Iron Will
The suspension harness gave way.
Chloe plummeted toward the grated floor, twenty feet below.
Without thinking, without breathing, I sprinted through the scalding steam and leaping sparks, throwing my body across the metal deck. I caught her in mid-air, rolling over my shoulder to absorb the impact, clutching her against my chest as we slammed into the steel plating.
"Chloe! Chloe, look at me!"
Her little body was burning hot, running a terrifying fever from the overclocked neural weave inside her skull. The ports at the base of her head were smoking faintly, leaking a thin, luminescent fluid. Her eyes were rolled back, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
"Mommy..." she whispered, her tiny fingers tangling weakly in my hair. "My head is on fire..."
"I've got you. Mommy's got you. It’s over, baby, it’s over—"
Heavy boots crunched on the shattered glass behind me.
I turned, shielding Chloe with my entire body.
Julian Sterling stepped out of the smoke. His coat was scorched, his face blackened by soot, a deep gash bleeding profusely over his left eye. In his hand, he held a sleek, titanium-tipped injector pen—the manual override tool.
"Give her to me, Evelyn," Julian snarled, his voice stripped of all composure, trembling with psychopathic obsession. "The upload reached sixty percent! The baseline is established! If I inject the stabilizer, the archive will survive!"
"She is my daughter!" I rose to my feet, holding Chloe tightly with my left arm, raising my empty handgun with my right, using it as a blunt weapon. "The only thing you are getting from this room is a burial at sea!"
Julian lunged forward with explosive speed. For an aristocrat, he fought like a trained assassin. His palm strike hit my wounded shoulder, sending an explosion of white agony through my collarbone. I staggered back, but refused to drop Chloe.
He swung the injector toward Chloe’s neck.
I blocked his wrist with my forearm, driving the heavy steel frame of the empty pistol into Julian’s broken cheekbone. Bone shattered. Julian stumbled back, roaring in pain, but lunged again, tackling me to the deck.
We slammed against the guardrail overlooking the flooded abyss of the lower rig. Julian pinned my right arm beneath his knee, his fingers wrapping around my throat, choking the life out of me while his other hand brought the glowing injector needle within inches of Chloe’s temple.
"She belongs to the Sterling name!" Julian hissed, spitting blood onto my cheek. "She belongs to history!"
I couldn't breathe. Black spots danced across my vision. My fingers clawed at his grip, but my oxygen was gone.
Beside us, Chloe’s eyes suddenly snapped open.
They were not violet. They were not hazel.
One eye was a blazing, incandescent purple; the other was a deep, tear-filled, human brown.
With a shriek that sounded half-child, half-thunder, Chloe reached out her tiny hand and shoved her fingers directly into the open gash on Julian’s face, tearing at his flesh with the unnatural, cybernetically augmented strength of the prototype.
Julian screamed in agony, his head jerking back.
His grip loosened from my throat. Air surged into my lungs.
In that split second of freedom, I didn't reach for a weapon. I grabbed the lapels of Julian’s coat, plant-kicking both feet into his chest, using every ounce of my remaining maternal fury to catapult him backward.
Julian’s back struck the weakened, shattered guardrail.
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The metal groaned, snapped, and Julian Sterling flipped backward into the open air, tumbling seventy feet down into the dark, churning, machinery-choked waters of the flooded ballast sea.
***
