Chapter 59 - The Boarding of the Iron Citadel
Daniel arrived like a human wrecking ball.
He collided with the shock trooper, grabbing the massive six-foot-six soldier by the throat and carrying him through the air, smashing entirely through the reinforced glass barrier of the central pavilion.
Glass shattered into millions of sparkling diamond-like shards as both men crashed into the inner sanctuary where the Neural Core pulsed. The trooper swung his knife, slicing across Daniel’s chest, but the wound instantly sealed with silver fire.
Daniel grabbed the trooper’s arm, twisted it until the bone splintered through the skin, and drove the man’s own knife straight down through his neck, pinning him to the floor.
Silence descended upon the broken glass chamber, broken only by Daniel’s heavy, ragged panting and the hum of the pulsing Core.
"Magnificent," Claire’s voice purred from above.
She walked slowly down the catwalk stairs, completely unbothered by the slaughter of her elite guard. In her hands, she carried a sleek, illuminated control pad.
"You see, Daniel? You cannot resist what you are. You were built to destroy. You were built to conquer. And now, the synchronization is at ninety-nine percent."
Daniel looked down at his trembling hands. The silver light had spread to his fingertips, his fingernails turning translucent and hard as diamond. He looked back through the shattered glass wall at Lily.
The little girl was lying on the deck, her breathing growing shallower with every second. Julian was crawling toward her, pressing a hand against her chest, looking up at Daniel with desperate, pleading eyes.
"She's dying, Daniel!" Julian screamed. "Her heart is stopping!"
"Save her, Daniel," Claire whispered, her voice dropping into the soft, intoxicating cadence she had used during their years of marriage. "Submit to the Black Horizon protocol. Step into the Core terminal. Surrender your human consciousness to the network. The moment you take the throne, the signal will stabilize, and Lily will live. She will be the princess of a new world."
"And if I refuse?" Daniel rasped, blood and silver dripping from his lips.
Claire's face hardened, the loving illusion evaporating into pure, sociopathic malice.
"If you refuse, the biological fail-safe will detonate inside your heart. The resulting electromagnetic pulse will fry every living cell in your body, and the feedback loop will liquefy Lily’s brain where she lies. You have five seconds to choose."
Daniel looked at Claire. He looked at the Neural Core—a monument to human hubris and technological tyranny. Then, he looked at his daughter, whose tiny, trembling lips formed a single, silent word:
*Daddy.*
"You're right, Claire," Daniel whispered, a terrifyingly calm smile breaking across his scarred, bloodied face. "I was built to destroy."
Daniel didn't step toward the terminal.
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Instead, he turned around and plunged both of his augmented hands directly into the raw, exposed high-voltage wiring of the main reactor bus bar fueling the Neural Core.
***
