Chapter 88 - The Strike at the Root
The pressure on my throat was absolute. The room spun in fractured halos of crimson and amber. My lungs burned for air that wouldn't come.
I saw Nicholas on the floor, struggling through muscular spasms, his fingers clawing desperately toward the weapon that lay just out of his reach.
*Never cut your hair, Clara. Promise me.*
My father's words echoed in the dark chambers of my suffocating mind. He hadn't just hidden an antenna in my hair. He had warned me about the shears because he knew *how* Miriam operated. He knew she would try to take the harvest before the fruit was ripe.
And then I remembered what my father taught me about structural loads: *Every hydraulic system has a relief valve. When the pressure is absolute, you don't fight the piston—you break the seal.*
Instead of clawing at her titanium fingers around my throat, I let my body go completely limp, dropping my entire weight toward the floor.
The sudden downward shift caught Miriam off balance for a microsecond. Her grip slipped an inch down my collarbone.
With that single inch of freedom, I drove my right hand into the pocket of my tactical trousers, pulling out the weapon I had retrieved from the 80th floor—not a gun, but the heavy, chrome-plated tailor's shears Miriam had used to sever my braid at the wedding reception.
I slammed the twin steel blades directly into the exposed filament beneath her left wrist.
Sparks detonated in a blinding spray of blue and white fire.
A high-pitched, inhuman shriek tore from Miriam’s throat as the electrical current from her own internal power cell backfed into her cybernetic forearm. The titanium grip shattered open.
I fell to the floor, gasping, coughing, sucking in lungfuls of cold, ozone-heavy air.
Miriam staggered back, clutching her smoking wrist. Synthetic fluid—black, viscous, and smelling of burnt sulfur—leaked between her trembling fingers, dripping onto the pristine white carpet.
"You insolent little bitch!" she snarled, her left arm hanging limp, sparks crackling from the torn synthetic flesh.
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"I am Henry Morrow's daughter," I spat, rising to my feet, holding the heavy shears like a dagger. "And you are nothing but an old parasite living in his iron coffin!"
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