Chapter 47 - The Blood on the Sterile Floor
The twin cracks of the 9mm rounds sounded like sharp whips compared to the thunderous roar of the shotgun.
Anthony stiffened. His left knee buckled under him with a sickening pop, and his ruined body slammed hard against an overturned stainless-steel instrument tray, sending scalpel blades and bone saws skittering across the blood-slick floor. The two hollow-point bullets had caught him dead-center in the sternum. He lay there on his back, staring up at the flickering ceiling strobes, his mouth opening and closing like a landed trout as bright arterial froth bubbled past his lips.
"A mother always knows where the heart is," Catherine murmured. She stood tall, stepping over the shattered nitrous cylinder, entirely unconcerned by the alarms blaring through the subterranean complex. "She gave you life; she has the divine right to reclaim it."
"You monster," Khloe spat, rising from the floor like an avenging specter, holding our newborn baby tight against her bruised chest. Khloe was pale, shaking, still suffering from the horrific trauma of the secret delivery Isabella had put her through in Boston, but in that moment, her eyes burned with the lethal light of an apex predator defending her den. "You shot your own son."
"I pruned a dead branch," Catherine replied, leveling the pistol smoothly at Khloe’s forehead. "Just as I am about to prune you, my dear daughter-in-law. You were only ever intended to be a vessel. A healthy, Midwestern farm-girl genetic slate to house the Vance continuum. You were never meant to walk out of this mountain."
"Catherine, look around you!" I barked, stepping between the barrel of her gun and Khloe, using my own body as a shield. "The alarms are screaming! Your private security breached Sector 4! The Swiss Federal Police will have transponders locked onto this compound within minutes!"
"The Swiss authorities do not enter this mountain without an act of parliament, Marcus," she purred, taking a slow, measured step closer. The red emergency strobe painted the angles of her high cheekbones in terrifying, theatrical crimson. "This facility is registered as a sovereign diplomatic vault. By the time anyone outside clears the diplomatic red tape, you, your pathetic wife, and that genetic anomaly in her arms will be incinerated in the bio-waste incinerator on Level 3. And I will walk out the alpine tunnel to my helicopter with the only asset that matters."
"Asset?" Khloe's voice cracked. "What asset?"
Before Catherine could speak, a ragged, wet gasp came from the floor between us.
Anthony’s bloodied left hand reached out and clamped around Catherine’s ankle with the crushing, desperate grip of a dying man.
"She... she lied to you, Khloe..." Anthony coughed, dark red blood pouring down his chin. "She... she didn't just want the twins for... the trust fund..."
Catherine’s eyes flashed with real panic for the first time. "Silence, Anthony!" She lowered her pistol to finish him, but Anthony hauled backward with all the deadweight of his failing body.
Catherine lost her balance, her designer heel catching in the pool of amniotic fluid and blood. As she pitched backward, I didn't hesitate. I threw my entire body weight forward, tackling her to the floor before she could re-aim. We hit the slick tiles in a violent collision. Her gun flew from her grip, sliding spinning across the wet floor until it clattered against the far wall.
She fought like a wild animal, clawing at my eyes with diamond-studded fingers, tearing bloody gouges down my cheeks. "Weiss! Kill them! Kill them both!" she shrieked.
Dr. Weiss, trembling in the corner, looked between the wrestling bodies, the bloody shotgun, and the flashing red emergency lights. He looked at Khloe, who stood holding the baby like a goddess of war, and then he looked at the exit doors. Without uttering a single word, the coward turned on his heels and bolted through the shattered blast doors into the darkness of the subterranean hallway.
"Marcus, don't let her up!" Khloe cried out.
I pinned Catherine’s wrists against the linoleum, pressing my knee hard into her ribs until she gasped for air. "Where is the exit to the funicular? How do we get off this mountain?!"
Catherine stared up at me, blood dripping from her sliced ear, and let out a chilling, breathless laugh. "You think... you think you won? Look at Anthony. Look at what he’s holding."
I glanced over my shoulder. Anthony was no longer trying to pull Catherine down. His bloody hand had reached into his soaked coat pocket and pulled out a small, palm-sized electronic detonator, its LED screen blinking in sync with the compound's sirens.
"I didn't... come here to save you, Khloe..." Anthony wheezed, his eyes turning gray and glassy as the life drained from his body. "If I can't... have the Vance fortune... nobody gets out of this tomb."
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His thumb dropped onto the black switch.
A deafening, deep-earth tremor rocked the foundations of the clinic. The floor lifted several inches, knocking me sideways off Catherine. Dust, plaster, and shattered concrete rained down from the ceiling as the heavy support beams behind the blast doors buckled under an explosion detonating somewhere deep in the lower drainage tunnels.
