Chapter 35 - Blackout at the Estate
A concussive blast blew the front double doors off their hinges, sending wood splinters and plaster showering across the foyer. Flashbangs detonated in blinding, ear-shattering sequence.
“Contact!” Thomas roared, firing his shotgun into the smoky hallway as tactical operators in night-vision goggles swarmed through the breach.
“Ethan! Grab Noah! Cover his head!” Margaret shouted, firing twice through the kitchen archway. The first round struck a contractor in the chest plate, staggering him backward; the second caught another in the throat.
Dr. Vance attempted to dive toward a hidden floor safe beneath the island, but Margaret grabbed him by his silk collar and dragged him across the tile floor. “You’re coming with us, Arthur! You start what you finish!”
Ethan scooped up his sedated, bleeding son, wrapping a sterile surgical towel tightly around the boy’s open neck incision. “Where do we go? The front is crawling with them!”
“The wine cellar!” Vance gasped, terrified of the gunfire shredding his antique cabinets. “There’s a fallout tunnel leading to the old drainage canal under the ridge! My grandfather built it during the Cold War!”
They scrambled down the narrow brick stairs into the cellar just as a fragmentation grenade detonated in the kitchen above, raining shattered marble and glass down the stairwell. Thomas slammed the reinforced steel blast door shut and threw the heavy iron bolt.
Heavy tactical boots thudded against the door from above. Muffled voices barked commands: *“Do not fire through the door! The boy must remain intact! The contract specifies an undamaged bio-core!”*
“They don't care about us,” Ethan whispered, his hands covered in his son’s warm blood. Noah was trembling violently in his arms, his heart racing at an alarming rate. “They only want the chip inside him.”
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Margaret checked her revolver. Three rounds left.
She turned to Vance, her eyes burning with pure, unadulterated grandmotherly fury. “If Noah dies in this tunnel, Arthur, I promise you will spend the rest of your short life wishing I had pulled that trigger right now. Lead the way.”
