My Parents Skipped the Funeral of My Husband and Two Children for My Sister’s Birthday, but Six Months Later, One Headline Made Them Panic When They Discovered What I Had Done. / Chapter 100 / 121

Chapter 100 - The Sinking Citadel

The platform tilted at an alarming seven-degree angle. Structural groans reverberated through the massive steel frame as thousands of tons of North Sea brine flooded the lower ballast tanks. Below us, explosions rippled through the generator banks, plunging the sanctuary into flashing emergency amber lights.

I slammed the silver cylinder into the terminal’s pneumatic interface. The mechanical receiver latched onto the metal casing, hissed violently, and drew the crimson liquid into the digital synthesis array.

On the wall screen, the telemetry link to David’s aircraft pod flashed from red to brilliant green.

*COMPOUND IDENTIFIED: NEURO-STABILIZER ALPHA.*

*TRANSMITTING FORMULATION CODE...*

*AUTOMATED SYNTHESIS ENGAGED AT AIRCRAFT TERMINAL.*

*ADMINISTRATION IN PROGRESS: 100%*

On the medical monitor, the erratic, dying peaks of David’s heart rhythm suddenly stabilized. The lethal spikes smoothed out into a steady, rhythmic sinus pattern. His blood oxygen saturation began to climb—78%, 85%, 92%.

A ragged sob tore from my throat. He was alive. The cipher was broken.

"Ethan, it's done!" I cried, grabbing my sidearm from the floor. "Get to the extraction point!"

*"No time!"* Ethan's voice roared through the earpiece over the sound of rushing water and collapsing metal. *"The moonpool gantry collapsed! The divers' access is gone! The only way off this rig is Julian’s private wet-dock at the base of the central shaft! We're already fighting our way down!"*

The deck lurched violently. A massive plate of the panoramic glass window cracked with the sound of a cannon shot, a spiderweb fracture blooming across its surface under the immense pressure of the North Sea gale. Water began to spray through the seal in freezing, violent jets.

I didn't look back. I jammed an emergency breaching charge into the lock of Julian’s escape hatch, set the five-second fuse, and dove behind the steel desk.

*BOOM.*

The door blew inward in a cloud of acrid smoke and shredded metal. I pulled myself through the twisted opening and plunged into the vertical descent shaft, sliding down the maintenance ladder through rising steam and howling alarms.

The water was already waist-deep on the lowest deck. Red emergency strobes cut through the rising foam. Ahead, through the flooding corridor, Ethan and his two surviving operators were laying down suppressing fire against Julian’s private security remnants.

And at the end of the submerged gantry, idling inside an illuminated moonpool, sat a sleek, black deep-sea submersible.

Standing on the narrow catwalk above the sub’s open hatch was Julian, holding an assault rifle in his uninjured left hand.