Chapter 50 - The Leviathan's Call
Arthur stared up the barrel of the gun, and for the first time in my life, I saw a flicker of absolute terror pierce the arrogance in his icy blue eyes.
"If you kill me," Arthur whispered, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps, "the secondary contingency activates. The offshore trust in Singapore releases every classified file, every genetic sequence of Noah, directly onto the dark web. Every private military syndicate, every rogue nation on earth will know that a five-month-old child in America carries the genetic blueprint for human immortality. They will hunt him until the end of time."
My finger tightened on the trigger, the tension on the firing pin reaching its breaking point.
"Then I will hunt every last one of them down," I said. "Starting with you."
Before I could pull the trigger, the entire vessel lurched violently.
A deafening metallic shriek echoed from the hull below, knocking Arthur from his chair onto the floor. The lights in the salon flickered violently, turning deep, blood-red as the master collision alarms wailed across the ship's intercom.
"Clara! Inbound torpedo tracks!" Marcus roared from the doorway, staring at the bridge monitor mounted on the salon bulkhead. "It’s not the Coast Guard! It’s an unregistered attack submarine surfacing five hundred yards off the starboard bow!"
On the panoramic glass windows, the dark, monstrous hull of a decommissioned Russian submarine broke the surface of the foggy Atlantic, its deck floodlights illuminating the *Leviathan* with blinding intensity.
A distorted voice crackled through the yacht's emergency open-band speakers, chillingly robotic and distorted through a military-grade vocal scrambler:
*"Arthur Vance, your contract with the Syndicate has expired. Surrender the child and the carrier, or prepare to be torpedoed."*
Arthur dragged himself up from the floor, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and looked at me with a twisted, manic grin.
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"You thought I was the head of the serpent, Clara?" he whispered, his eyes wide with madness. "I was only their scientist. Welcome to the real war."
A massive explosive shockwave tore through the bottom deck of the yacht, tilting the floor forty-five degrees as freezing seawater rushed into the salon, shattering the glass walls into millions of deadly projectiles.
