HER STEPMOTHER THREW A 3-YEAR-OLD GIRL OFF A PRIVATE ISLAND INTO THE OCEAN! Her father jumped into the raging waves to save her, but when they reached shore, the little girl pointed at a fleeing speedboat and whispered something that made his blood run cold. What she revealed next exposed a terrifying secret about her dead mother! / Chapter 68 / 80

Chapter 68 - The Abyssal Deluge

The auxiliary purge valve did not vent air.

It detonated the explosive charges holding back the secondary cooling manifold of the oceanic megastructure.

A hundred thousand tons of high-pressure Pacific seawater blasted through the ceiling of the cathedral like the fist of an angry god. The sheer kinetic force of the deluge obliterated the catwalks, crushed two of Sterling’s armored mercenaries into bloody paste against the bulkhead, and swept away the heavy equipment in a churning, roaring torrent of black foam.

"Extraction! Now!" Sterling screamed, his aristocratic composure shattering into raw, feral panic as the water instantly reached his waist.

His mercenaries scrambled frantically toward the breach point, abandoning their useless, short-circuited powered suits and clawing through the freezing brine toward the docking tunnel of their deep-sea submarine. The mercenary holding the containment capsule containing Lily slipped on the slick deck, the heavy tube sliding across the metal floor toward the edge of a plunging abyss that dropped straight into the flooding reactor trench below.

"Lily!" Daniel lunged through the churning water, throwing his entire body across the flooded deck.

His fingers scraped against the smooth polycarbonate surface of the capsule, catching the locking handle just as it tipped over the precipice. The weight of the capsule nearly dragged him into the abyss, the raging currents tearing at his clothes, but Daniel dug his tactical boots into an exposed hydraulic flange, his muscles screaming under the strain as he hauled his daughter back onto the platform.

He popped the manual emergency seal of the capsule.

Lily gasped, the sudden rush of cold, salt-laden air waking her from her neural coma. She looked up into Daniel's soaked, blood-streaked face and instantly buried her tiny hands into his tactical vest, weeping uncontrollably.

"I've got you, baby!" Daniel roared over the deafening thunder of the incoming ocean. "Daddy’s got you! Look at me—I’m not letting go!"

"Daniel!" Julian's voice came through the spray.

Julian had hauled himself onto a floating equipment crate, his sidearm drawn, holding his ears against the pressure pain. He fired three rapid, manual shots at a cartel operative attempting to flank them, dropping the man into the rising water. "The whole level is going under in ninety seconds! The submarine tunnel is our only way out, but Sterling’s men are sealing the airlock!"

Daniel looked toward the dais.

The throne platform was already submerged beneath six feet of churning, violent water. Claire’s body was floating peacefully, her white hair spreading out like a halo in the dark brine, her lifeless eyes staring up through the shattered ceiling toward the surface she would never see again. She was gone.

There was no time to mourn. There was only the ruthless, driving instinct to survive.

Daniel scooped Lily onto his back, securing her tightly with the emergency webbing from his tactical harness. He grabbed the data drive from the deck, shoving it into his waterproof collar pouch, and scooped up a discarded combat shotgun from a dead mercenary.

"Julian! On me!" Daniel shouted, plunging into the chest-deep current. "We take that submarine, or we drown in this cage!"

They fought their way through the surging deluge toward the jagged hull breach. The pressure was building exponentially; the air inside the sealed chamber was being compressed by the incoming millions of gallons of water, creating an ear-shattering atmospheric pressure that made their sinus cavities ache with blinding agony.

Inside the breach corridor, Sterling and his four surviving mercenaries were desperately trying to manually dog down the heavy, circular pressure hatch of their deep-sea transport submarine.

"Lock it! Lock it now!" Sterling shrieked, water swirling around his chest as he helped his men haul the four-ton titanium hatch closed. "Leave the rest! We have the Ark's telemetry on the drive! We don't need the girl if we have the frequency coordinates!"

"Sterling!"

The roar cut through the sound of the rushing water like a war horn.

Sterling spun around, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief.

Daniel Reed was charging through the five-foot wall of churning water, moving with an impossible, relentless velocity. He didn't look human; the golden cipher was burning faintly behind his eyes again, fueled by pure, unadulterated parental rage.

Daniel didn't bother aiming for center mass. He raised the combat shotgun and fired three successive blasts of high-density tungsten buckshot straight into the exposed hydraulic hinges of the submarine hatch.

The heavy steel hinges shattered with explosive violence. The hatch broke free from its mounts, swinging inward and crushing the front mercenary into the submarine's entry vestibule.

Sterling pulled a backup ceramic pistol from his vest, leveling it at Daniel's head.

Daniel didn't flinch. He didn't duck.

He closed the distance in a fraction of a second, his left hand clamping down onto the slide of Sterling's pistol like an iron vise, stripping the weapon from his grip with a brutal twist that snapped Sterling's wrist with a sickening *CRACK*.

Sterling screamed, clutching his broken arm, falling back against the submarine's inner bulkhead.

Daniel stepped into the airlock, Julian right behind him, slamming the emergency manual seal behind them. The outer chamber flooded instantly, cutting off the catastrophic thunder of the collapsing cathedral outside, leaving them locked in the cramped, red-lit interior of the cartel's deep-sea vessel.

Daniel shoved Sterling against the steel wall, pressing the hot barrel of the shotgun against the billionaire’s throat.

"Where is the pilot?" Daniel growled, his voice vibrating with absolute lethality.

Sterling coughed, blood bubbling from his lips, his aristocratic arrogance completely shattered into sniveling terror. "In... in the cockpit. Automated routing. Daniel... please. I have billions. Off-shore sovereign trusts. I can make you richer than nations!"

Daniel stared into the eyes of the man who had ordered his family’s destruction, the man who had turned his wife into a monster and his daughter into a weapon.

"You already gave me everything I need," Daniel whispered.