Chapter 7 - Breach at Blackwood
The King Air’s landing gear sheared off with a deafening screech of rending metal as Marissa deliberately belly-landed the aircraft onto the manicured, snow-covered lawn of the Blackwood courtyard. The fuselage plowed a massive, smoking trench through the frozen turf, throwing up geyisrs of dark earth and crushed ice before slamming hard into the stone retaining wall of the main mansion’s grand terrace.
Sparks rained down in a blinding cascade. The smell of burning rubber, hot aviation fuel, and scorched electrical wiring filled the cockpit.
Before the settling smoke could even begin to clear, Marissa kicked open the jammed emergency exit hatch above her head. She hoisted herself out onto the crumpled wing, her combat boots finding purchase on the slick metal surface, and dropped straight down into the snow.
She didn't feel the freezing cold. Adrenaline pumped through her veins with the force of a tidal wave. In her hands, she held an MP5 submachine gun she had liberated from the covert weapons cache hidden beneath the floorboards of Andrew’s Rickenbacker safehouse.
Heavy steel double doors at the front of the mansion blasted open. A half-dozen private security contractors, clad in black tactical gear and armed with assault rifles, poured out into the courtyard, yelling orders through their comms headsets.
“Intruders! Shoot on sight! Neutralize the target!”
Marissa didn’t wait for them to spread out. She dropped to one knee in the snow, her breathing steady and rhythmic, exactly as she had been trained in the elite reconnaissance units. *Inhale. Exhale. Sight picture. Press.*
*Rat-tat-tat-tat.*
The first two guards dropped instantly, their legs swept out from under them by precise, non-lethal lower-limb fire. The remaining four scrambled for cover behind stone fountains and marble pillars, returning blind, panicked fire that chewed up the snow around Marissa’s boots.
“You’re out of your depth, Sergeant!” a voice bellowed from the upper balcony of the mansion.
Marissa looked up. Standing behind the reinforced glass railing of the second-floor veranda was a tall, silver-haired man in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit. Even in the freezing wind, he looked entirely unbothered, sipping amber liquid from a crystal tumbler. Victor Sterling.
“You have my daughter, Sterling,” Marissa shouted over the howling wind, her voice cutting through the gunfire like a razor.
Sterling smiled, a thin, cruel expression that didn't reach his cold eyes. “Your daughter? Oh, Sergeant, you misunderstand. Lily isn’t a possession; she is an investment. A masterpiece of genetic conditioning. And right now, she’s undergoing her final integration test in the lower sub-levels.”
Sterling raised a small digital remote control and pressed a button.
Suddenly, the heavy iron doors of the mansion’s ground-floor annex slid open automatically. From the dark, sterile corridors inside, a small figure stepped out into the courtyard light.
Marissa froze, her weapon dropping an inch.
It was Lily. She was wearing a uniform of dark grey wool, her hair cropped short. But it wasn't her appearance that paralyzed Marissa—it was her eyes. They were completely blank, devoid of any warmth or recognition, staring at Marissa with the detached, analytical gaze of a trained soldier.
On her collar, pinned right over her heart, was the tiny plastic green dinosaur.
“Lily,” Marissa breathed, a sob catching painfully in her throat. “Baby... it’s me. It’s Mama.”
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Lily tilted her head slightly, her expression unchanging. She raised her right hand, holding a sleek, military-grade taser pistol, and pointed it directly at Marissa’s chest.
***
