Chapter 99 - The Eclipse Protocol
"I am not your creation," I said, my voice cutting through the hum of the cradle. "I am the woman who is going to put a bullet through your throat."
Beatrice chuckled, a musical sound devoid of warmth. "Kill me, and the *Aethelgard* initiates the Eclipse Protocol. A thermal core scuttle. Three thousand tons of specialized ordnance will vaporize this bay, Port Blackwood, and every soul within twenty miles. Julian dies. Clara dies. You die. But the Seven Rings will still transmit from the secondary orbital relays."
She raised a small, platinum remote control, her thumb hovering over an illuminated red toggle.
"You have no moves, Claire. Hand Clara to the automated cradle. Her biological synthesis will release Julian’s neural locks. He survives. You survive. You may even have another child—an ordinary, quiet life far from our work."
Behind me, Richter stepped into the light, his pistol raised. "She’s lying, Claire! The moment Clara is locked into the cradle, the feedback pulse vaporizes the donor's brain stem! Julian dies the second the broadcast starts!"
Beatrice's eyes narrowed, landing on Richter for the first time. "Peter. Still dragging your useless sentimentality behind you like an amputated limb. I should have turned you into nutrient slurry in Berlin."
"You should have," Richter snarled, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet struck Beatrice’s right shoulder, spinning her around, but her hand didn't drop the remote.
From the shadows of the mirrored perimeter, two concealed heavy automated turrets whirred to life, firing twin volleys of heavy caliber rounds. Richter took three hits to the chest. He collapsed backward onto the polished deck, his blood spreading in a dark, gleaming lake across the pristine white floor.
"Richter!" I screamed.
"Claire... the core... beneath the glass..." Richter coughed out, his eyes dimming as he pointed a trembling, blood-slicked finger toward the abyss beneath the suspended cradle.
Beatrice hissed in pain, clutching her bleeding shoulder, but her thumb jammed down onto the platinum toggle.
*"Eclipse sequence initiated,"* the automated voice roared. *"Primary resonance in sixty seconds. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight..."*
In the suspended cradle, Julian’s back arched violently as a scream of raw, soul-shattering agony ripped from his throat. The glowing silver threads across his torso blazed with blinding white light.
The dampener in Clara’s system broke under the sheer proximity of the transmitter.
Her eyes snapped open, blazing with that deep, luminescent crimson once more. But this time, she didn't whimper. She didn't cry.
She looked at Julian.
*"Daddy,"* Clara whispered.
The word cut through the wailing klaxon like a razor through silk.
The crimson in her eyes did not fade—it shifted. It turned from that toxic, invasive red into a blazing, brilliant gold.
Clara reached out her small hands from beneath the tactical webbing on my back. A sonic wave of pure, coherent electromagnetic resonance exploded from her chest, shattering every mirror in the spherical room into a billion falling diamonds of silver glass.
The automated turrets exploded in showers of sparks.
Beatrice was thrown off her feet, crashing hard against the reinforced steel bulkhead, the platinum remote flying from her grasp and shattering on the deck.
The cradle containing Julian dropped four feet as two of its supporting hydraulic cables snapped under the acoustic shockwave.
"Julian!" I screamed, lunging forward across the sea of broken glass.
I ignored the slicing agony in my knees, ignored the alarms signaling the imminent detonation of the core. I scrambled up the access ladder of the dangling cradle, my combat knife drawn, and began slashing frantically through the fiber-optic harnesses binding Julian's wrists and chest.
"Claire..." Julian’s voice was a ragged whisper, the neural crown sparking as the feedback died. His eyes blinked open, hazy and tortured, but completely human. "Clara... she's..."
"She's with us! She saved you!" I sobbed, cutting the final restraint on his neck.
Julian tumbled out of the harness into my arms, his dead weight nearly pulling us both off the dangling platform into the dark abyss below.
*"You fool!"*
May you like
Beatrice’s voice rose from the wreckage of the mirrored floor. She pulled herself up, her white coat soaked in her own blood, her face twisted in a mask of homicidal hysteria. She held an emergency manual detonator wired directly to the ship's ballast valves.
"If I cannot harvest the Seventh Sovereign, no one leaves this steel tomb alive!"
