My mother grabbed my wrist in front of two-star generals and told me I had no place in the ballroom, while my brother mocked my uniform—but when the commanding general opened his sealed folder, he announced a name that made my entire family freeze… / Chapter 49 / 131

Chapter 49 - The Mother's Curse

The ballistic glass of the launch capsule began to spiderweb under the immense thermal stress and atmospheric pressure rising from below.

"The silo roof isn't opening!" Arthur screamed over the apocalyptic roar, holding his bleeding shoulder as he knelt beside Julian. "The exhaust gas is backing up! In sixty seconds, the capsule will vaporize!"

I hauled Eleanor to her feet by her coat. Her face was flushed with feverish madness, her hair plastered to her skull by sweat. "How do you vent the chamber, Eleanor? Talk, or I leave you chained to the railing to burn first!"

"Let it burn!" she shrieked, her voice manic and triumphant above the deafening vibration. "Let the whole mountain collapse! I won't spend my life in a cage while you walk free! We all die here—as a family!"

"Marcus!" Arthur shouted, his hands frantically working at the quick-release buckles of Julian's chair. "Julian's in ventricular fibrillation! His heart is giving out from the shock of the disconnection!"

Julian was seizing violently, white foam bubbling from his lips, his hands clawing uselessly at the air.

I looked at the primary console. The glass screens were shattering one by one from the intense acoustic resonance. The manual silo vent switch was encased in a thick, padlocked steel cage on the wall behind the missile gantry—accessible only via an exposed maintenance catwalk currently being licked by the roaring flames of the exhaust backdraft.

I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall, racked the bolt on my carbine, and looked at Arthur.

"Get Julian onto the service elevator behind the capsule," I ordered, my voice cutting through the tempest. "It has an independent hydraulic hoist powered by the emergency diesel lines outside the blast zone. Take him and Eleanor and get to the surface."

"Marcus, you can't go out on that catwalk!" Arthur yelled, terror in his eyes. "The air is superheated! Your lungs will sear!"

"If I don't open the exhaust louvers, the whole silo detonates like a subterranean thermonuclear warhead, and the elevator won't get fifty feet before it's incinerated!" I slammed the emergency elevator control, forcing the steel doors open. I shoved the handcuffed Eleanor inside, then helped Arthur drag Julian's limp, seizing body across the threshold.

"Marcus..." Arthur looked back at me, tears streaming down his soot-covered, wrinkled face. For the first time in my life, there was no condescension in his eyes. Only the crushing weight of a father who realized he had worshiped a false idol while discarding pure gold. "I'm sorry. For everything. For the ballroom... for the desert... for your whole life."

"Save him, General," I said quietly. "Let me do my job."