My stepsister kicked me in the ribs while my father stood there watching, but when I pressed my emergency shortcut three times, the military police arrived—and the officer’s first question changed everything. / Chapter 45 / 81

Chapter 45 - The Surgical Disconnect

"Are you out of your mind?!" Miller yelled at the screen. "I’m an MP officer, not a cardiothoracic surgeon! If I nick her intercostal artery, she’ll bleed out into her pleural cavity in ninety seconds!"

*"If you don't do it, an eight-hundred-pound tungsten kinetic spear is going to strike this grid in three minutes and fifteen seconds!"* Catherine shouted back, her voice commanding, merciless, and terrified all at once. *"Look in the trauma kit! There is a high-frequency cauterizing scalpel and a local neural freeze spray. The node is four centimeters below the scar tissue from her childhood reconstructive surgery. You cut two inches lateral to the sternum, locate the silver braided filament, and slice it clean through!"*

**TIMER: 02:45... 02:44...**

My heart rate monitor shrieked: **178 BPM.**

"Miller..." I managed to choke out, reaching up with trembling fingers and grabbing the collar of his tactical vest. "Do it. Don't... don't let them have it."

Miller stared down at me, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles in his temples throbbed. He didn't hesitate any longer. In a split second, the combat-hardened investigator took over.

"Keller, hold her shoulders down," Miller ordered, tearing open my shirt and exposing the pale skin of my torso, where the dark, ugly purple bruise from Maya’s kick still bloomed over the faint, silver line of an old childhood surgical scar. "Hold her completely still. If she flinches, we both die."

Keller pinned my shoulders to the floor, turning his head away as Miller snapped open the sterile plastic casing of the trauma scalpel.

"Hannah, look at the screen. Look at your mother," Miller said, his voice dropping into a steady, flat tone.

He sprayed the freezing aerosol directly onto the bruised flesh. The cold was blinding, burning worse than fire, but before the sensation could register, the tip of the cauterizing blade sank into my skin.

A scream tore from my throat—a raw, guttural sound that echoed off the titanium walls. The smell of burning flesh filled the cramped space as the cauterizing edge sealed the micro-capillaries instantly.

*"Steady, Miller,"* Catherine’s voice came through the speaker, tight and unwavering. *"Two centimeters deeper. Clear the fascia. You will see a metallic silver braid wrapped around the bone."*

My vision blurred into blinding white sheets of agony. My hands clawed into the floor tiles, my nails splitting against the stone.

"I see it!" Miller grunted, sweat pouring down his face, dripping from the tip of his nose onto my chest. "I see the filament! It’s vibrating—it’s glowing dull orange!"

**TIMER: 00:58... 00:57...**

**HEART RATE: 184 BPM.**

"Cut it!" I gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of my lips as my chest locked into a violent spasm. "Miller... CUT IT!"

Miller jammed the blunt-nosed wire shears from the trauma kit beneath the silver filament. He twisted, levering the micro-wire away from the pulsing nerve beneath it, and squeezed the handles together with both hands.

A sharp, metallic *SNAP* echoed through the room, accompanied by a bright blue electrical discharge that threw Miller back onto his haunches.

The crushing weight on my chest vanished instantly.

The shrieking alarm overhead stuttered. On the central terminal, the red countdown timer abruptly froze at **00:19**, blinked three times, and shifted to a cold, neutral amber:

**LINK SEVERED. TELEMETRY CARRIER LOST. TARGETING SAFES ENGAGED.**

I collapsed back against the blood-stained floor, my breath coming in shallow, shuddering gasps. The monitor showed my pulse rapidly plummeting: *140... 120... 98...*

On the screen, Catherine Vance let out a ragged breath, slumping forward onto her console. *"The satellite has aborted its terminal dive. The kinetic projectile has been dumped into the dead zone of the mid-Atlantic trench."*

Miller crawled back over to me, his hands shaking violently as he pressed a sterile pressure dressing against the incision in my chest. He looked down at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock, awe, and disbelief.