Chapter 77 - The Saltwater Guillotine
Elena spun around at the base of the elevator shaft. The flashing blue sparks from the turbine illuminated the catwalk thirty feet above in macabre, disjointed frames.
Julian was pinned against the railing, Alistair’s left hand driving the combat knife repeatedly into his son's chest. Julian’s hands clawed weakly at his father’s throat, his eyes wide and vacant in the strobe light, before his body went completely limp, slumping over the railing.
Alistair stood over the corpse of his last surviving son, panting like a rabid wolf, his face spattered with Julian’s blood. He turned slowly, his feverish, dying gaze piercing the gloom until it locked directly onto Elena at the elevator entrance.
"One down," Alistair wheezed, tossing the bloodied knife from his left hand to his right. "And now... the final branch."
He limped toward the catwalk stairs, his movements jerky, driven entirely by adrenaline and malignant spite. "You cannot escape this vessel, Elena. I have engaged the terminal descent. In four minutes, we crush at sixteen hundred feet. The hull will fold like an empty tin can."
Elena didn't retreat into the elevator. There was no escape in a steel box.
Instead, she unclipped a high-pressure CO2 fire extinguisher from the bulkhead wall. She braced her boots against the non-skid deck, her maternal protective fury boiling over into absolute, icy focus.
"Come down here, Alistair," she said, her voice cutting through the hum of the dying turbines. "Come get your daughter."
Alistair descended the metal spiral staircase, each step clanging with the weight of impending doom. As his boot touched the bottom grating, he lunged forward, the knife flashing toward Elena’s throat.
Elena didn't dodge. She hoisted the heavy steel cylinder of the extinguisher and unleashed a blinding, freezing blast of pressurized carbon dioxide directly into his face.
The sub-zero gas struck Alistair’s eyes and open mouth at eight hundred pounds per square inch. The patriarch let out an agonized, muffled howl as the freezing chemical blinded him and starved his lungs of air. He staggered blindly, slashing the knife through empty air.
Elena swung the twenty-pound steel base of the cylinder with every ounce of strength in her core.
The heavy forged steel struck Alistair’s kneecap with a sickening crunch. He collapsed to the deck, shrieking, the knife skittering away across the floor.
Elena dropped the extinguisher, stepped over him, and planted her boot firmly on the patriarch’s mangled right shoulder. Alistair groaned, pinned to the floor, gasping for breath through frost-bitten lips.
"You took my wedding day," Elena said, her voice dropping to a terrifying whisper as she drew the backup snub-nosed revolver from her harness. "You threw me into the Atlantic. You turned my husband into a monster. And you tried to steal my child."
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Alistair stared up at her through swollen, milky eyes, coughing up thick clots of dark blood. Yet, even on the brink of death, a grotesque, arrogant smile touched his lips.
"Kill me..." he choked out. "Go ahead. Shoot. But my hand... is linked to the primary computer. When my heart stops... the sea-valves open."
