Chapter 47 - THE BOY WITH TWO HEARTBEATS
Margaret stepped out from the shadow of the tunnel, her weapon leveled dead at the center of the man’s forehead. The wind from the open sea whipped her gray hair across her face, carrying the stinging spray of salt and foam.
“Don’t call me Maggie,” she said, her voice carrying over the thunder of the ocean like a whip crack. “The man who called me Maggie had a soul.”
Thomas lowered his transceiver, a weary, crooked smile touching his weathered lips. His face was lined with deep scars along the hairline—the mark of high-pressure decompression trauma.
“You always were the best marksman in the sector,” Thomas said, waving his hand slightly. Behind him, the three operators lowered their weapons, though their fingers remained curled tight against the triggers. “Tell Ethan to bring the boy out. The tide is coming up, and Sector Seven’s automated scuttling sequence will implode this whole cliffside in four minutes.”
Ethan walked out of the tunnel, Noah held tight in his arms. When Ethan saw the face of the man standing on the rocks, his knees nearly gave out.
“Dad?” Ethan choked, the word catching in his throat like broken glass. “You... you let us believe you were at the bottom of the ocean for twenty years.”
“I was at the bottom of the ocean, Ethan,” Thomas said, his voice dropping into a harsh, hollow rasp. “The Navy didn't abandon the Proteus. They repurposed it. We were ordered to build a deep-submergence listening grid that could monitor automated autonomous drones beneath the ice caps. But the human mind couldn't interface with the acoustic frequencies without breaking.”
He pointed at Noah.
“Until we bred an interface that could.”
“You bred your own grandson?” Ethan screamed, rage ripping through his chest with such violence that Margaret had to physically hold him back. “You turned my son into a laboratory rat!”
“Clara was my best genetic specialist,” Thomas said coldly, showing no emotion, no remorse. “She was assigned to monitor Noah from birth, to ensure the neural lattice bonded with his cerebral cortex. But she developed an irrational, maternal fixation. She tried to steal him. She tried to take him off the grid.”
“She tried to save him from you!” Margaret spat, her finger tightening on the trigger. “And I’m going to finish what she started.”
“You shoot me, Maggie, and Noah dies within an hour,” Thomas said, pulling a medical injector from his tactical vest. The vial inside was filled with an iridescent, glowing amber fluid. “His brain was activated the moment the deep-sea carrier wave broadcast. The neural lattice in his head is currently overclocking his nervous system. Without the stabilizing inhibitor, his brain temperature will hit one hundred and eight degrees. His heart will rupture.”
Noah let out a sharp cry, clutching his chest. Ethan looked down in horror.
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Through Noah’s thin cotton shirt, two distinct, asynchronous heartbeats were visibly hammering beneath his ribs.
***
