Chapter 70 - The Midnight Eclipse
The coastal highway was a blur of gray asphalt, torrential rain, and jagged ocean cliffs.
Behind us, the lead gunship leveled its nose, its forward minigun spinning up with an ominous, mechanical whine. Tracers lit the storm like streaks of crimson lightning, chewing through the SUV’s rear ballistic glass, spiderwebbing the surface into frosted white fractures.
"Hang on!" the driver yelled, throwing the wheel hard to the left as an explosive rocket detonated against the guardrail, sending chunks of flaming asphalt and twisted metal soaring into the raging ocean below.
I threw myself across the backseat, using my entire body as a living shield over Noah. "Mommy’s here, baby, Mommy’s here," I whispered frantically into his soft curls, my heart beating so hard it felt like it would tear through my ribs. Noah’s cries were drowned out by the thundering roar of the twin turbine engines hovering barely fifty feet above our vehicle.
Suddenly, the SUV’s engine let out a dying shriek as an EMP dart penetrated the hood, instantly frying the vehicle’s electrical grid. The steering locked, the engine died, and the two-ton vehicle went into an uncontrollable skid, spinning twice across the wet asphalt before slamming violently into the stone cliff face on the mountain side of the highway.
The impact knocked the breath completely from my lungs. Marcus was bleeding heavily from his forehead in the front seat, unconscious against his deployed airbag. The driver was motionless.
Groaning in agony, I kicked the warped rear door open with my boot, tumbling out onto the rain-slicked highway with Noah securely wrapped in my arms.
The rain beat down mercilessly on my face.
Hovering directly above the road, two matte-black assault helicopters kicked up a blinding storm of spray and wind. Ropes dropped from the open bay doors, and six heavily armed operators in unmarked black tactical armor rappelled down to the pavement, forming an impenetrable perimeter around me.
Their weapons were raised, laser sights painting crimson dots across my chest and forehead.
I reached for my sidearm, but the holster was empty—lost in the crash. I was out of weapons, out of allies, trapped between a concrete mountain and a hundred-foot drop into the churning, rocky ocean.
The lead operative stepped forward, his boots clicking rhythmically against the wet asphalt. He held a customized suppressed rifle loosely across his chest, moving with effortless authority.
"Drop to your knees, Clara," a synthesized voice crackled through his helmet's external speaker.
I stood tall, refusing to kneel, holding Noah tighter against my chest. "You will have to kill me before you touch my son."
The operator stopped three paces away. He reached up with gloved hands, unlocked the pressurized seals of his ballistic helmet, and lifted it off his head.
Rain washed over the operator's face, plastering dark hair against sharp, aristocratic cheekbones.
My breath stopped entirely. The world around me seemed to freeze, the sound of the roaring helicopters and the crashing ocean fading into deafening silence.
Standing before me in the black armor was not a mercenary, nor a corporate hitman.
It was a woman whose face was the mirror image of my own mother—the mother who had supposedly died in a mysterious car crash twenty-two years ago.
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She looked at me with cold, piercing eyes, then shifted her gaze down to Noah.
"Hello, Clara," she said quietly, her voice identical to the lullabies I remembered from my childhood. "I see you brought my grandson home."
