Chapter 64 - The Breach in the Hull
I didn't try to outrun her. I threw my entire weight backward, shielding Leo with my torso as Eleanor’s claws slashed across my shoulder, tearing through leather and flesh. The searing pain nearly made me drop my baby, but I held him against my chest with a death grip.
Before Eleanor could deliver a finishing blow, the blast shutter blew inward with a thunderous roar.
A concussive shockwave of heat, smoke, and fragmented shrapnel engulfed the chamber. Detective Miller charged through the breach, his tactical shotgun leveled from the hip. He didn't ask questions; he didn't hesitate. He saw the monstrous, mutated matriarch bearing down on me and pulled the trigger.
The 12-gauge slug hit Eleanor square in the center of her chest.
The impact lifted her off her feet and slammed her into the central computer console. Sparks exploded from the shattered screens, and an automated klaxon began to wail through the underwater installation:
*WARNING: CRITICAL STRUCTURAL COMPROMISE IN SECTOR FOUR. PRESSURE SEALS FAILING. EVACUATION PROTOCOL INITIATED.*
"Elizabeth, get up!" Miller yelled over the deafening alarm, grabbing my arm to hoist me to my feet. He looked pale, covered in soot, with blood running down the side of his temple, but his eyes were hard as flint. "The whole lower level is taking on water! The blast breached an exterior drainage line!"
"Victoria," I gasped, pointing toward the shattered glass cabinets across the room.
My sister was lying in a pool of blood and chemical reagents, her chest rising and falling in shallow, agonizing hitches. Despite everything—the balcony, the poison, the years of torment—I could not leave her to drown in the dark.
Miller gritted his teeth, slung his shotgun over his back, and rushed to Victoria’s side. He hauled her limp body over his broad shoulder just as Eleanor began to move again.
"She’s... she’s not dead," Miller breathed, horrified.
Eleanor was crawling out of the ruined console. The shotgun wound in her chest was smoking, black fluid leaking between cracked ribs, but her spine was straightening with terrifying, unnatural resilience. Her jaw was unhinged, her eyes entirely swallowed by dark, dilated pupils. She looked less like a human being and more like a biological weapon refusing to cease function.
"The blood..." Eleanor gargled, dragging her broken legs forward with mechanical determination. "The blood belongs to the Vance line!"
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"Move! Now!" Miller shouted, pushing me ahead into the flooding access corridor.
Behind us, a six-foot wall of black Atlantic seawater smashed through the observation window at the end of the operating theater. The sound of imploding glass echoed like thunder through the abyss.
