Chapter 61 - The Sovereign Pulse
Instead of their rescue transport, a massive, unflagged private stealth gunship hovered twenty yards off the edge of the helipad, its powerful spotlight blinding Daniel as he stumbled forward into the gale.
The heavy door of the gunship slid back.
Standing inside the illuminated hold, sheltered from the torrential rain, was a tall woman in a slate-grey cashmere coat, her dark hair pulled tightly back into an immaculate knot. Her face was impossibly familiar.
Daniel froze, the rain plastering his hair to his forehead, his breath catching in his throat.
"Elena?" Daniel whispered into the roaring wind, unable to believe his eyes.
The woman did not smile. She held an encrypted tablet identical to Leo's, watching the two boys huddled against Daniel's legs with cold, calculating detachment.
Behind her in the cabin of the gunship sat Subject Four, the little girl from the Black Forest, strapped securely into a passenger seat, staring forward like an obedient soldier.
Then, the woman raised a handheld comms link to her lips, and her voice crackled over the rig’s industrial loudspeaker system, perfectly clear, chillingly devoid of love or recognition.
"Thank you for completing the extraction, Daniel," she said over the howl of the storm. "You were always the most efficient delivery asset in the portfolio. Now, surrender the anchors, or Platform Null-Seven will be scuttled beneath your feet with you on it."
Leo suddenly gripped Daniel's arm, his fingers digging frantically into his father's soaked sleeve as he pointed down at the tablet in his own hand.
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"Dad..." Leo screamed above the thunder, the screen flashing an active sonar trace from the abyssal depths directly beneath the rig. "She's not alone! Look what's rising from the seabed!"
Beneath the thrashing waves, a shadow three times larger than the entire oil rig was rising toward the surface, and all four biometric monitors on Leo's screen flatlined simultaneously into a single, terrifying countdown.
