Chapter 56 - The Titan of the Shallows
Daniel hit the surface of the rolling sea, his legs moving with impossible speed and power, skimming across the surface of the water like a skipping stone before leaping twenty feet into the air.
He slammed down onto the rubberized apron of the lead hovercraft.
The mercenaries manning the dual railguns barely had time to pivot their weapons before Daniel’s fist smashed through the gunner’s ballistic helmet, shattering the plexiglass and driving the man into the deck.
The second soldier lunged with an electrified combat blade. Daniel sidestepped the strike with inhuman fluidity, seized the soldier’s arm, and snapped the elbow backward. In the same motion, Daniel ripped the high-frequency blade from the falling man’s grip and hurled it straight through the armored cockpit glass.
The blade struck the pilot in the chest. The hovercraft spun violently out of control, careening into the path of the second vessel. The two crafts collided at fifty knots in an apocalyptic fireball of burning fuel and shredding steel.
Daniel leapt from the exploding wreck, diving into the churning water and surfacing beneath the third hovercraft.
Reaching up with both hands, he sank his fingers deep into the vessel’s twin air-intake turbines. The nanites in his blood flared, superheating his skin to over a thousand degrees. The turbine blades seized, melted, and tore themselves from their housing, violently ripping the hovercraft’s engines apart from the inside out.
The third boat flipped end over end, crashing upside down into the surf.
Daniel dragged himself out of the foaming water and hauled his body onto the jagged volcanic rocks that lined the perimeter of Archipelago X.
A hundred yards down the rocky shoreline, Julian had intentionally grounded the stealth cutter. The boat lay wedged between two massive basalt boulders, its hull smoking but intact.
Daniel sprinted across the sharp rocks, oblivious to the stones slicing his bare feet. Every wound closed within seconds, leaving trails of silver steam in the cold rain.
He reached the cutter just as Julian kicked open the hatch, carrying Lily’s limp body wrapped in a thermal blanket.
"She’s barely breathing, Daniel," Julian said, his eyes filled with terror. "Her pulse is over one-eighty. Her heart can't take this strain!"
"The transmission is cooking her nervous system from the inside," Daniel said, taking his daughter into his arms. Her skin felt like burning coal. "The signal is broadcasting from the fortress atop the caldera. If we don't sever the link in thirty minutes... she won't survive the synchronization."
Julian racked his assault rifle. "Then we don't have time to be subtle."
May you like
"No," Daniel growled, looking up at the colossal, brutalist concrete monolith carved directly into the volcanic peak ahead. Searchlights were sweeping down the mountain, sirens beginning to wail like banshees across the dark island. "We tear the mountain down."
***
