Chapter 98 - The Echo of the Ballroom
Julian Vance stepped out of the darkness of the grand staircase, and David felt the air leave his lungs.
His brother no longer wore his four-star dress uniform. The fabric had been shredded from the waist up, fused into a massive exo-lattice of black crystalline armor that seemed to grow directly out of his spine and ribs. Four segmented appendages, like the legs of a glass mantis, arched over his shoulders, twitching with every heartbeat.
His face was contorted into a permanent, agonizing rictus of absolute power and unbearable pain. The left side of his face was still the handsome, golden-haired prince of the Pentagon; the right side had collapsed into a lattice of blue-hot quartz that hummed like a power substation.
"Look at me, David!" Julian shrieked, his voice splitting into three distinct harmonics that shattered the crystal pendants from the chandelier above, raining sharp glass across the parquet. "I am the general now! I am the commander of the fleet!"
"You're an antenna, Julian," David said, his eyes never leaving his brother’s face. He slowly slung his shotgun across his back and reached for his tactical belt. "You’re a biological relay. The moment the central lattice establishes full synchronicity with the orbital array, your neural tissue will burn out like a five-watt fuse."
"He lies!" Eleanor hissed from the piano, her sapphire eyes widening with sudden, frantic terror. For the first time, the veneer of aristocratic composure cracked, revealing the terrified, ambitious monster beneath. "Julian, don't listen to him! He was always jealous of you! He was jealous of your rank, jealous of your father's smile, jealous of every medal I pinned to your chest!"
"Jealous?" David took three measured steps toward the dais. The obsidian cylinder in his left hand began to glow, its violet light pulsing in direct opposition to the blue light radiating from Julian’s chest. "I pitied him. Every time you paraded him in front of the Senate committees, every time you bought him an assignment in a rear-echelon headquarters while men with real courage died in the dirt—I knew what you were doing. You didn't love Julian, Eleanor. You loved a mirror."
"Shut up!" Julian roared, the mantis-like crystalline appendages snapping forward with blinding speed.
The strike was faster than human reflexes. The sharp, glass-like tip drove through the shoulder of David’s tactical vest, pinning him against the grand piano with bone-crushing force.
The impact cracked the mahogany frame of the Steinway in half. Eleanor didn't move; she watched with a cold, triumphant grin.
"Kill him, Julian," she whispered, her voice dropping to a serpent’s hiss. "Take the key from his pocket. Complete the circuit. Elevate our house!"
David didn't scream, though blood poured from the wound where the crystalline blade had pierced his muscle. He locked his eyes onto Julian’s half-human face, just inches away. He could see his brother’s human eye—the pale blue eye of the boy who used to hide in the attic during their father’s shouting matches—trembling with absolute horror behind the glass veneer.
"Julian," David whispered, his voice steady despite the agony in his shoulder. "Do you remember the lake? When we were twelve?"
Julian’s jaw locked. The mantis appendage shuddered, its forward pressure halting.
"You fell through the ice," David said, his blood dripping onto the white keys of the ruined piano. "Mother didn't come to get you. She was in the parlor, drinking tea with the Undersecretary. She sent the groundskeeper because she didn't want to ruin her shoes in the snow."
"Stop..." Julian whimpered, the human side of his face twisting in torment. The blue light in his eye flickered.
"I pulled you out, Julian," David continued, his fingers slowly wrapping around the obsidian cylinder at his belt. "Not because Mother told me to. But because you were my brother. You don't have to die for her vanity."
"Julian! Kill him now!" Eleanor screamed, rising from the bench, her fingernails clawing at the air. "The ship is descending! The sequence is failing!"
"I... I can't..." Julian gasped, his human eye welling with a tear of bright, synthetic blue. "David... it burns... it's inside my thoughts... it's eating my memories..."
"I know," David said softly.
May you like
Then, with a single, explosive movement, David thrust the obsidian cylinder forward—not into Julian’s heart, but directly into the central nerve-junction of the crystalline exo-lattice on his brother's chest.
***
