Chapter 38 - The Fall of the Leviathan
The blast doors at the rear of the command bridge didn't open—they were blown off their hinges by an improvised explosive made from a ruptured oxygen canister and a signal flare.
The heavy steel door crushed two guards as it flew across the bridge, skidding into the primary navigation console in a shower of sparks.
Through the smoke and fire walked Operative 7.
He was bleeding from a dozen wounds. His shirt was gone, his chest blackened by soot, and in his right hand he held the heavy iron fire ax, its blade dripping with industrial grease and blood. He looked like an avenging demon dragged straight from the boiler rooms of hell.
"Secure the door!" Prime shouted from behind the bulletproof glass of the laboratory.
Four private security contractors moved into formation, raising their tactical shotguns.
7 didn't flinch. He sprinted forward, diving beneath the first blast of buckshot that blew apart an overhead display monitor. He drove the heavy ax into the knee of the first contractor, ripped the shotgun from the man's hands as he fell, and fired twice from the hip, clearing the pathway to the glass lab.
Inside the glass room, the cipher reached 85%.
*UPLOADING BLACK HORIZON PROTOCOL: 88%... 91%...*
"Hurry!" Prime yelled at the terminal, his cold composure finally cracking into frantic desperation. "Override the safety protocols! Drain the sequence!"
7 slammed his body into the reinforced glass wall of the lab.
The impact caused spiderweb cracks to blossom across the laminated surface, but the glass held. Prime turned toward him, a sneer twisting his features.
"It's ballistic glass, you fool!" Prime laughed, stepping back toward the console. "Three inches of polycarbonate laminate! You couldn't break through it with a tank!"
7 didn't try to hit the glass again.
Instead, he looked down at the master electrical junction box mounted directly beneath the observation window—the box that powered the laboratory’s environmental seal and the chair’s retinal scan array.
7 raised the shotgun, pressed the barrel directly against the high-voltage conduit, and pulled the trigger.
*BOOM!*
A blinding arc of blue electricity exploded through the wall. Sparks cascaded like a waterfall. Inside the lab, the retinal scanner died with a high-pitched whine. The hydraulic locks on Lily’s chair popped open, and the terminal screen flashed red:
*ERROR: EXTRACTION ABORTED AT 94%. CIPHER CORRUPTED.*
Prime let out a roar of pure, unadulterated fury. He drew a custom titanium semi-automatic pistol from beneath his coat, aimed it through the cracked glass at 7, and emptied the magazine.
The bullets penetrated the weakened glass, one of them tearing through 7's side, another piercing his left shoulder.
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7 stumbled backward, hitting the floor hard as the ship groaned, pitching twenty degrees to the starboard side. An enormous wave struck the bridge windows from the outside, shattering the exterior glass and flooding the command deck with freezing Atlantic seawater.
***
