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 94 / 121

Chapter 94 - The Leviathan Platform

The icy waters of the North Sea hit like a thousand needles against the exposed skin of my face before the thermal suit’s seal engaged. The world dissolved into blackness, illuminated only by the faint heads-up display projecting navigational vectors inside my dive mask.

Beneath the crashing surface waves, the underwater propulsion unit pulled me steadily forward through the sub-zero current. Beside me, Ethan and four elite operators formed a wedge formation, their black tactical rebreathers releasing zero telltale air bubbles into the sea.

Out of the abyssal gloom, the legs of *Triton Alpha* rose like titanic black pillars anchored to the ocean floor. The massive steel caissons were encrusted with decades of barnacles and kelp, but twenty feet below the waterline, the architecture transformed. High-tensile titanium struts, fresh underwater weld lines, and glowing maintenance ports indicated that this relic of the oil boom had been thoroughly militarized.

Ethan signaled with two fingers, pointing toward an intake vent beneath the secondary drilling moonpool. Our sonar scans revealed it was an open cooling shaft for the platform's independent nuclear-isotope generators.

We ascended rapidly, cutting through a reinforced aluminum grate with a handheld thermite torch that burned silently beneath the waves with a brilliant, blinding white flare. As the metal gave way, we hauled ourselves into the flooded lower maintenance chamber of the rig.

Water cascaded from our suits as we breached the surface of an internal dock. The air reeked of ozone, hydraulic fluid, and stale sea salt. Above us, industrial gantries echoed with the steady, rhythmically pulsing thrum of massive server banks.

A pair of private security contractors in gray maritime camouflage patrolled the walkway above, their assault rifles slung low across their chests. Before they could peer down into the sump, Ethan was already moving. With terrifying silence, two suppressed shots coughed from his weapon. Both guards collapsed against the railing, hauled backward into the shadows before their radios could transmit a panic code.

I pulled off my dive helmet, shaking out my wet hair, and drew my sidearm. My gaze locked on the digital chronometer strapped to my forearm.

Two hours, fifty-eight minutes.

"Clear the level," I whispered. "We find the central operations deck. We find Julian."

"Claire," Ethan warned, checking the telemetry feed coming from our airborne transport orbiting outside missile range. "David’s heart rate is becoming erratic. Arhythmia has set in. If we don’t have the chemical stabilizer within sixty minutes, even the antidote won't reverse the brain stem infarction."