Chapter 58 - The Sister in the Shadows: The Woman Stepping Off the Black Helicopter Had Claire’s Face
"Take cover!" Dante roared.
*TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*
A hail of thirty-millimeter armor-piercing rounds chewed through the concrete walls of the warehouse, pulverizing brick into clouds of red dust and sending jagged stone fragments slicing through the air like shrapnel.
Marco’s men returned fire with assault rifles, but the small-arms rounds ricocheted uselessly against the thick steel armor of the submersibles. Two Moretti enforcers were blown backward into the mud, their body armor shredded by the high-caliber barrage.
"The tunnel! Now!" Claire screamed, diving behind the reinforced fender of the armored G-Wagon. She pulled Leo close to her chest, whispering soothing words into his ear as the deafening gunfire threatened to burst their eardrums.
Leo didn't cry. Instead, his little fingers gripped the silver dog tag around Claire’s neck, his eyes reflecting the muzzle flashes illuminating the darkness.
Suddenly, the autocannons on the submersibles ceased firing.
A heavy silence fell over the docks, broken only by the lapping of the river water and the groaning of the shattered warehouse roof.
Through the drifting cordite smoke, the sound of a twin-rotor Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter cut through the night. Unlike the earlier choppers, this aircraft was equipped with analog, shielded turbines—it had survived the EMP completely unaffected.
The massive heavy-lift helicopter hovered thirty feet above the flooded dry dock. A high-tensile steel cable dropped from the cargo bay, followed by a tactical descent platform.
Standing on the platform, holding the cable with one hand and wearing a form-fitting gray combat suit, was a woman.
The floodlights from the submersibles snapped on, focusing their beams entirely upon her as she touched down gracefully on the slick concrete pier.
Claire froze. Her heart felt as though it had been pierced by an icicle.
Dante stepped beside her, his shotgun raised, but as the woman stepped into the light and pulled off her ballistic goggles, his breath caught in his throat.
The woman had long, dark auburn hair that whipped in the river wind. She had the same aristocratic cheekbones, the same sharp, lethal jawline, and the exact same piercing sapphire eyes as the woman standing beside Dante.
She was Claire’s identical twin.
"Evelyn...?" Dante whispered, his voice cracking with impossible disbelief.
The woman smiled—a cold, beautiful, predatory smile that sent a shiver down Dante’s spine. She didn't look at Dante. Her gaze locked directly onto Claire, and then slowly drifted down to the baby nestled in Claire’s arms.
"Hello, little sister," the woman said, her voice an exact mirror of Claire’s, but laced with a venomous, cruel perfection. "You always were the sentimental one. Running away with the prototype... playing house with a mafia brute."
"You're dead," Claire choked out, her knuckles turning white around her Kimber .45. "I watched the telemetry flatline in Callao! I saw them lower your capsule into the trench!"
"You saw what the Council wanted you to see, Claire," Evelyn replied smoothly, taking a slow, measured step forward. Two dozen elite commandos in gray armor rappelled down behind her, forming an impassable wall of steel and firepower. "You think you saved Leo? You think you brought him back to his father out of love?"
Evelyn laughed—a musical, terrifying sound that echoed over the dead waters of the harbor.
"Leo was never sick, Claire. That crying spell you noticed? That fever that wouldn't break? It was the neural synchronization protocol activating. He wasn't crying because he was in pain... he was crying because his brain was downloading the entire launch cipher for the Leviathan fleet."
Evelyn held out her gloved hand toward the baby.
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"And now, the download is complete. Give him to me, Claire. Or I will have Dante killed right in front of you, just like I should have killed him five years ago in Amalfi."
***
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