Chapter 39 - The Sins of the Flesh
The floodwaters surged across the bridge deck, sweeping away corpses, broken monitors, and burning debris.
The glass partition of the laboratory, already cracked and weakened by gunfire, collapsed under the weight of the rushing sea.
Prime was thrown to his knees as two feet of churning water swept into the lab. He scrambled for his dropped pistol, but a hand—bloody, battered, and trembling with sheer, unyielding willpower—clamped down over his wrist.
Prime looked up into the face of his clone.
Operative 7 was on top of him, pinning him to the flooding steel floor.
"You... are... an... echo," Prime wheezed, his fingers clawing desperately at 7's throat. "You are nothing! A genetic Xerox! A ghost!"
"I am the man who saved her," 7 snarled, blood spraying from his lips onto Prime’s pristine face. "You gave me your face, Prime. You gave me your blood. But everything that matters... everything that loves her... that came from Claire. That came from me."
Prime managed to free his hand, driving his thumb viciously into the gunshot wound in 7's shoulder.
7 screamed in agony, his vision blacking out for a split second. Prime used the moment to roll on top of him, bringing both hands down around 7’s throat, pressing his thumbs into his windpipe.
"Die, you malfunctioning piece of trash!" Prime shrieked, his eyes wild with madness. "Die so I can finish what I started!"
7’s lungs burned. His vision narrowed to a pinprick of dark tunnel. The high-pitched tone in his brain returned, louder than ever. The neural mesh was firing erratically, telling his body to shut down, telling his heart to surrender.
Then, through the roar of the incoming water, a small voice cut through the darkness.
"Get off my daddy!"
Prime paused, turning his head.
Lily stood on top of the shattered console, holding the heavy titanium fire ax with both hands, her small body shaking with effort. With a scream that echoed above the howling storm, she swung the flat side of the heavy ax into the back of Prime’s head.
The blow wasn't lethal, but it was enough.
Prime grunted, his grip slipping from 7’s throat as he stumbled sideways into the rushing water.
7 didn't hesitate. Driven by the last dying spark of his bio-enhanced strength, he surged upward, grabbed Prime by the lapels of his charcoal coat, and hurled him through the shattered exterior bridge window into the raging Atlantic Ocean below.
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Prime’s scream was swallowed instantly by the roaring, black abyss of the sea.
***
