Chapter 72 - Depths of the Abyss
The concussion tore through the observation deck with the force of an artillery shell. A hurricane of freezing North Sea wind, black mist, and pulverizing seawater surged through the blown-out reinforced glass, knocking men from their feet and sending shards of laminate crystal whistling across the steel floor like shrapnel.
Emma threw her body over Lily in a heartbeat, taking the brunt of flying debris across her back. She hit the iron grating hard, her lungs emptying of air, but her grip on her daughter never loosened. Beneath her, Lily let out a sharp cry, her small hands clinging furiously to Emma’s wet wool lapels.
Across the shattered room, Evelyn stumbled backward, clutching her cane as two of her armed guards formed a frantic human shield before her. The aristocratic man was screaming into his transceiver, but his voice was drowned out by the grotesque, metallic screech echoing from the black ocean below.
Fifty yards off the rig’s platform, the colossal ballistic submarine lurched violently upward. A geyser of subterranean foam and churning mud erupted beneath its hull. From the black depths of the trench, something far more sinister had struck: not an explosive warhead, but a massive supercavitating impactor that had cleaved clean through the submarine’s rear ballast tanks.
"Look!" Lily screamed, pointing a trembling hand past Emma’s shoulder.
Through the howling storm, Emma looked out. Rising through the boiling white foam right beside the crippled leviathan was a second hull—slender, matte-black, and completely angular, bearing the unmistakable razor-sharp contours of a deep-sea stealth interceptor. Its forward floodlights ignited, cutting through the Arctic deluge with blinding crimson halogen beams.
On the conning tower of Evelyn’s sinking sub, the guards were losing their footing as the stern dipped at an unnatural forty-five-degree angle. Daniel was still lashed to the railing, the rising black water already licking at his boots, his battered face illuminated by the blood-red spotlights.
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"Kill them!" Evelyn shrieked over the howling gale, her composure entirely shattered, her manicured fingers clawing at the collar of her drenched coat. "Kill Emma! Execute the girl now!"
The two surviving mercenaries raised their assault rifles, their targeting lasers cutting through the sea spray. But before their fingers could squeeze the triggers, a volley of suppressed, high-velocity rounds perforated the metal bulkhead behind them, punching straight through both men with surgical, devastating precision.
