Chapter 47 - The Protocol of Crows
Centrifugal force slammed me against the server racks as the world spun into a blur of red emergency lights and black alpine darkness outside the windows. The screaming of the twin turbines rose to an unbearable, mechanical shriek as the pilot fought desperately to maintain trim.
I scooped up Beatrice’s dropped sidearm, shoved it into my waistband, and grabbed the ruggedized terminal, which was still running on its internal battery. Julianna was clinging to the jump-seat frame, her fingernails tearing against the upholstery as gravity tried to rip her toward the rear doors.
"Julianna! Grab my hand!" I roared over the shrieking wind that now tore through the bullet-shredded fuselage.
She lunged forward, her fingers locking around my forearm with desperate strength. I braced my boots against the sheared base of the server rack. Beatrice was sliding along the deck toward the tail section, clawing uselessly at the smooth floorboards.
"Henrik is coming for the ledger!" Beatrice screamed, her voice cracking with terror above the roar of the engines. "He doesn't want to save you! He never wanted daughters—he wanted organic hardware! If you let him take that terminal, neither of you will ever leave a concrete room again!"
The left engine exploded in a ball of flame. The shockwave blew the helicopter's rear loading ramp wide open. The freezing alpine wind rushed in like an invading army, sucking loose papers, server covers, and debris out into the black abyss.
"Brace for impact!" the pilot yelled over the cabin comms before the system went dead.
Through the shattered side windows, the white slope of an alpine ridge rushed upward to meet us. The trees were coming fast—black needles scraping against the belly of the aircraft.
*CRASH.*
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The impact was a cataclysm of tearing metal and shattering glass. The landing skids sheared off instantly. The helicopter slammed into a deep snowdrift, skipping like a flat stone across ice before the cabin split in two along the seam where Henrik’s tracer rounds had weakened the frame.
I was hurled into the darkness, the freezing powder swallowing me whole as the world went completely black.
