My Marine Brother Threw My Visitor Badge Into the Gravel and Mocked Me in Front of His Entire Unit / Chapter 52 / 53

Chapter 52 - The Cost of Redemption

The sound of four hundred feet of ocean water pressing against failing glass was like the groan of a dying beast.

High-pressure water jets sliced through the air like razor blades, knocking down catwalks and flooding the lower decks in knee-deep foam.

"Ramirez! Get the team to the emergency escape pod in Sector Nine! Move now!" Dylan roared into his microphone.

"Sergeant, what about you?" Ramirez yelled back amid the chaos.

"Go! That's an order!" Dylan commanded.

Dylan turned back to the catwalk. The explosion had sheared the metal walkway in half. Marcus was dangling precariously over the edge, his fingers desperately clawing at a severed cable, his legs swinging over the churning, rising water of the flooded moon pool.

"Dylan!" Marcus cried out, all his arrogance and venom vanishing, replaced by raw, unvarnished terror. "Help me! The cable is slipping!"

Dylan sprinted toward the edge, throwing himself flat onto his stomach on the wet steel. He thrust his arm over the abyss, reaching down through the spray.

"Grab my hand!" Dylan yelled, his voice cutting through the roar of rushing water.

Marcus looked up, his blood-streaked face pale as chalk. He looked at Dylan’s outstretched hand—the same hand he had slapped away on the gravel at Pendleton, the brother he had mocked, betrayed, and tried to kill.

"Grab it, Marcus!" Dylan shouted, his fingers inches from his brother’s wrist. "I'm not leaving you down here! Take my hand!"

Marcus reached up, his trembling fingers wrapping around Dylan's forearm. Dylan braced his boots against the steel support frame, his muscles screaming as he pulled with everything he had, hauling his brother up toward safety.

For a split second, Marcus’s eyes softened. The ghost of the boy Dylan used to play with in the backyard of their family home flickered behind the mercenary's hardened eyes.

"You always were... the better Marine, Dylan," Marcus whispered, his voice barely audible over the roaring torrent.

With his other hand, Marcus reached into his tactical sleeve pocket, pulling out a small, heavily encrypted black data drive, and jammed it into Dylan's tactical vest pocket.

"What is this?" Dylan shouted, straining under Marcus’s weight.

"The board of directors... Aegis Vanguard," Marcus gasped, water crashing over them both as a major viewport shattered above. "The warheads were just a diversion. The real strike... is coming from inside Washington. Hayes is in danger."

"Tell them yourself! Pull up!" Dylan roared, gripping tighter.

"No," Marcus said, looking down at the rising whirlpool of water below them. "There's only one escape pod left. If you drag me, neither of us makes it out."

Before Dylan could scream in protest, Marcus deliberately loosened his grip, slipping his fingers from Dylan’s hand.