My pregnant sister toasted to the death of my unborn baby at her baby shower, and when I tried to leave, my own mother shoved me off a second-floor balcony—but the detective’s discovery at the hospital revealed a nightmare far worse than I imagined. / Chapter 25 / 81

Chapter 25 - The Judas Covenant

The room spun. The walls of the bunker seemed to tilt inward, suffocating me under the weight of an unspeakable violation.

"You're lying," I choked out, tears of pure rage burning behind my eyes. "You're insane, Martha! You're trying to destroy my mind!"

"Look at the ledger, Elizabeth!" Martha screamed, pointing a trembling, dirt-caked finger at the open drawer. "Binder 104! Read the serial number on your own intake chart! Raymond Sterling drew up the legal consent forms with forged signatures from Eleanor! They needed a surrogate with Vance blood to carry the purest genetic match, and Eleanor offered you up like a sacrificial lamb!"

Before Daniel could reach for Binder 104, a heavy iron pipe swung out from the blind spot behind the cryo-dewar.

The metal struck Daniel across the shoulder with a sickening thud, knocking him against the steel examination table. His flashlight flew across the floor, and his service weapon spun into the darkness under the refrigeration units.

Raymond Sterling stepped into the fluorescent light, his broken arm tucked into his coat, his eyes bloodshot, his face contorted in vicious, animal desperation. In his good hand, he held a heavy pneumatic bolt gun used for securing heavy machinery.

"You should have stayed buried above ground, Detective," Sterling panted, his chest heaving, his tailored suit ripped and covered in filth. "All of you."

"Raymond," Martha gasped, taking a step toward him. "We can still make the transfer. If we destroy the records here, the offshore trusts automatically default to the survivor clause—"

Sterling didn't even look at her. He leveled the bolt gun and fired point-blank into Martha’s chest.

The high-pressure metal rod struck with devastating, instantaneous force. Martha let out a small, wet gasp, her eyes widening in disbelief as she collapsed backward against the frozen glass of the cryo-tank. The glass cracked, spraying plumes of sub-zero fog over her dying form.

"There is no survivor clause for you, Martha," Sterling rasped, turning the weapon toward me. "You're a liability. You always were. But Elizabeth... Elizabeth is the signature."

Daniel surged from the floor, tackling Sterling by the knees.

The two men crashed into the central stainless-steel table, sending instruments, scalpels, and glass specimen jars crashing to the floor in a cacophony of shattering glass and sloshing formalin. Sterling drove his elbow into Daniel’s wounded temple, but Daniel was relentless. He clamped his hands around Sterling’s throat, driving his thumbs into the carotid artery.

Sterling gagged, flailing with the bolt gun, the metal shaft firing harmlessly into the ceiling bricks. With a final, explosive heave, Daniel twisted Sterling’s arm backward, pinning him face-down into the pool of chemical preservative on the floor.