Chapter 31 - The Siege of Bethesda
The red emergency beacon pulsed against the hospital room walls, throwing rhythmic, blood-colored shadows over Liam’s bandaged chest. The suppressed rattle of gunfire outside had died down, replaced by the sickening silence of tactical execution. Whoever these men were, they were not private corporate muscle. Their movements were methodical, deliberate, and marked by the terrifying economy of Tier-One operators.
"Ellie, get behind the bed," Liam wheezed, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the stainless steel IV pole, trying to force his injured frame upright. "If they’re using subsonic rounds inside a military medical facility, they aren’t taking prisoners. They’re sanitizing the room."
"Neither am I," I muttered. My left shoulder whined as the servomotors engaged, the carbon-titanium arm locking into overdrive. The cold alloy hummed through my nerve endings, a violent vibration that deadened fear.
The brass door handle clicked downward.
The door began to ease open—just an inch, clearing space for a flashbang canister. Before the operator could slide the cylinder across the floor, I kicked the reinforced heavy oak door with everything I had. The heavy slab smashed backward against the point man's helmet with a sickening crunch of bone and composite Kevlar.
The operator stumbled into the corridor, dropping the unpinned canister. I lunged forward into the darkened hallway, grabbed his tactical harness with my prosthetic hand, and drove him into the opposing drywall. My titanium fingers sank through his ceramic armor plates like dry paper, crushing his radio receiver into his collarbone.
"Clear the room!" a cold voice barked from the darkness down the hall. Two muzzle flashes lit the corridor, rounds tearing through the plaster right above my ear.
I rolled behind a heavy metal medicine cart, kicking it forward down the hallway into the line of fire. Behind me, Liam fired three precise shots with a sidearm he had retrieved from the downed operator, catching the second shooter in the throat.
Julian’s voice suddenly crackled from a broken comms unit pinned to the downed soldier’s vest. "Ellie! Liam! Do not take the main elevators! They’ve severed the cables! The entire fourth floor is sealed under quarantine protocols!"
"Julian!" I yelled into the comms unit, dragging Liam out into the corridor while ducking beneath another hail of drywall shrapnel. "Who are they?"
"Black-budget naval contractors—*Neptune’s* personal wet-work detail," Julian replied, his breath ragged. "Admiral Vance is already mobilizing the Capitol garrison, but we have less than four hours before the *Ford’s* reactor fails! We have to get to the shipyard now!"
I looked down at the tactical tablet strapped to the dead operator’s forearm. The countdown timer was synced to the Leviathan drive:
*03 HOURS, 48 MINUTES.*
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"We're on our way down the maintenance chute," I said, slinging Liam's arm over my mechanical shoulder. "Tell Vance to prepare for war."
***
