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 80 / 121

Chapter 80 - Breaching the Sanctum

"Ethan," my voice was dangerously low, vibrating with a terror far worse than anything I had felt facing Victoria’s mercenaries. "Get the children into their coats. Wrap them in the thermal blankets."

"Claire," Ethan said, his hand resting on the heavy mechanical release wheel of the Subject Zero vault door. "If David is behind this door... you need to be prepared for what they might have done to him. Six months of continuous neural mapping..."

"Open the door, Ethan."

Ethan didn't argue. He slotted Finch’s master override keycard into the heavy slot beside the wheel. The hydraulic pistons hissed, releasing decades of pressurized nitrogen in a thick cloud of white vapor. The heavy steel door groaned as Ethan threw his weight against the wheel, spinning it counter-clockwise until the deadbolts retracted with a series of heavy, echoing thuds.

The door swung outward.

Inside, the room was pitch black, save for the rhythmic, pulsing green glow of an advanced life-support console.

I stepped through the threshold, my boots crunching on loose cables.

Suspended in the center of the room, inside an upright, fluid-filled cylindrical stasis pod, was a man.

Electrodes were attached to his temples, their wires feeding into an overhead quantum computing array. His skin was pale, his beard overgrown and ragged, his body thin from months of intravenous feeding. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose, bubbling faintly in the green liquid.

David.

My husband.

A sob tore from my throat, caught somewhere between joy and horrifying agony. I rushed forward, slamming my hands against the thick acrylic cylinder. "David! David, can you hear me?"

Inside the fluid, the man’s eyelids twitched.

His eyes opened—hazy, unfocused, clouded with sedation, but unmistakable. He looked through the glass, his gaze locking directly onto mine. Behind the oxygen mask, his lips moved, trying to form a word he hadn't spoken in half a year.

*Claire.*

"I’ve got you," I cried, tears streaming freely down my face, smearing against the cold acrylic. "I’ve got you, David. I’m getting you out. We’re going home."

Ethan stepped into the room, examining the control panel for the pod. "The fluid drain cycle takes two minutes. If we disconnect him improperly, the sudden barometric drop could cause an embolism. We have to run the purge protocol."

Ethan hit the drain switch.

The green liquid began to swirl, draining rapidly through floor grates as the pod's life-support pumps roared to life.

Suddenly, an alarm siren began to wail throughout the entire underground installation—not the soft warning chime of the lower wards, but the deafening, pulsing klaxon of a total facility lockdown.

The overhead lights flickered and turned crimson.

A mechanical voice echoed from the intercom speakers embedded in the ceiling:

*[WARNING. INTRUSION PROTOCOL LEVEL 5 ENGAGED. FACILITY DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED BY REMOTE SATELLITE COMMAND. DETONATION IN FIVE MINUTES. ALL EXITS SEALED.]*

"Remote command?" Ethan cursed, spinning around, his rifle raised. "Who the hell initiated that? Finch is unconscious upstairs!"

Suddenly, the screen on the central stasis console flashed violently.

The neural mapping data vanished, replaced by an incoming high-priority encrypted video transmission originating from a private server in London.

The video window expanded.

Sitting in a sunlit leather armchair in a lavish, oak-paneled study was a woman holding a porcelain teacup. She had immaculate pearl earrings, styled grey hair, and a face that was cold, pristine, and entirely devoid of human empathy.