Chapter 50 - The Activation Sequence

The gunshot echoed like thunder inside the metallic dome.

Dylan twisted his torso instinctively, but the bullet grazed his collarbone, shredding the fabric of his combat shirt and drawing a line of searing red fire. Ignoring the pain, Dylan lunged forward like a striking predator.

Before Marcus could re-acquire his sight picture, Dylan's left hand locked around Marcus's wrist, driving the barrel of the handgun upward toward the ceiling. The secondary shot blew out an overhead floodlight, raining hot glass down around them.

Dylan drove his elbow into Marcus’s jaw. The impact cracked with sickening force, snapping Marcus's head back and knocking the weapon from his grip. The gun clattered through the floor grating, tumbling into the dark depths of the moon pool below.

Marcus roared in fury, throwing a savage right hook that caught Dylan across the cheekbone. Marcus tackled Dylan hard against the crane control console, sending alarms screaming across the screens.

*EMERGENCY LAUNCH OVERRIDE INITIATED: 60 SECONDS TO GRAVITY RELEASE.*

"We both die down here!" Marcus hissed, his hands clamping around Dylan’s throat, pressing him hard against the edge of the guardrail. Marcus's eyes were wide, dilated with madness. "If I don't rule the new order, neither do you! Dad’s bloodline ends right here, four hundred feet beneath the waves!"

Dylan felt the cold steel of the railing digging into his spine, the air cutting off in his lungs. Below him, the dark waters swirled like a waiting grave.

He remembered his father's dying words in the hospital room: *Watch over your brother, Dylan... but never let him break your spine.*

Dylan reached down with both hands, grabbing Marcus’s thumbs, twisting them back with violent, unyielding leverage. Marcus shrieked in agony as the joints popped. Dylan drove his knee straight into Marcus’s solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs, followed by a vicious headbutt that broke Marcus’s nose in a spray of scarlet.

Marcus staggered backward onto the slick catwalk, clutching his bleeding face, gasping for breath.

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Dylan stood tall, his chest heaving, wiping blood from his split lip. He reached down to his belt, unhooked his father's silver whistle—the one Master Sergeant Vance used to drill his recruits—and let it drop onto the steel plate in front of Marcus.

"You said power belongs to the one holding the detonator," Dylan rasped. "Look at your hands, Marcus. You have nothing."