Chapter 138 - Red Tide in the Lower Hull
I grabbed the heavy titanium flash drive from the terminal port and slammed the heel of my palm under Hayes’s chin. His head snapped back, his helmet flying off as he struck the deck. Before the two guards could bring their weapons to bear in the strobe-lit darkness of the red beacons, I dove behind the hyperbaric tank.
Submachine gun fire erupted, the high-velocity rounds ricocheting off the armored glass of the tank with ear-splitting cracks. Inside, Eleanor writhed in terror as spiderweb fractures spread across the acrylic enclosure. The pressurized saline began to spray through the micro-cracks in fine, hissing jets.
"Cease fire! Cease fire, you idiots!" Hayes bellowed from the floor, coughing blood. "You'll breach the pressure seal!"
Too late.
The structural integrity of the tank failed. With a sound like a small bomb detonating, the front acrylic face exploded outward. Hundreds of gallons of warm, chemically treated saline and synthetic blood flooded the deck, knocking the two guards off their feet. Eleanor was washed out with the deluge, crashing onto the wet iron floor like a piece of stranded flotsam, her ventilator hose ripping violently from her throat.
She lay on her back, choking on her own fluids, clawing weakly at the slick metal deck.
I lunged through the torrent, sliding across the deck to the medical gurney. Clara was screaming, clutching the railings. I grabbed the child in one arm, hoisting her small frame against my chest, and swept Hayes’s discarded sidearm off the floor with my free hand.
"Emily!" a voice gurgled behind me.
I stopped at the threshold of the heavy blast doors.
May you like
Eleanor was crawling toward me through the red-stained brine. The life-support needles were trailing behind her like severed puppet strings. Her face was contorted in absolute agony, her claw-like hands leaving smears of blood against the gray paint of the bulkhead.
"Emily... please..." she gasped, her voice raw, stripped of all aristocratic dignity, reduced to the guttural begging of a dying animal. "The canister... the oxygen... plug it in... I’m your mother... you can’t leave me here..."
