Chapter 139 - The Severed Thread
I stood in the doorway, Clara’s face buried deep into the crook of my neck, her small hands clutching the collar of my tactical jacket. The ship listed sharply to port as thousands of tons of Arctic seawater flooded into the lower compartments, Vance’s sabotage tearing the *Leviathan Prime* apart from within.
Sirens wailed in rising and falling screams. Through the open hatch, I could hear the shouts of panicked sailors, the metallic slamming of watertight bulkheads, and the deep, grinding groan of the hull struggling against the encroaching pack ice.
Eleanor reached my boot, her trembling, cold fingers wrapping around my ankle. Her fingernails were broken, bleeding into the saltwater pooling around us.
"You... owe me..." she wheezed, her lungs rattling with fluid, her eyes wide with the desperate, primordial terror of nonexistence. "I gave you... life... Emily... you have to save me..."
I looked down at her.
For thirty years, this woman had held my existence in the palm of her hand. With a single glance, she had validated my father’s fists. With six words at a Thanksgiving table, she had sentenced me to a lifetime of guilt, making me believe that every bruise, every insult, every drop of blood was my own creation—that I was the architect of my own torment.
I knelt down slowly, keeping Clara shielded behind my shoulder. I looked directly into Eleanor’s fading, terrified eyes.
"Do you remember the dining room, Eleanor?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm amid the blaring sirens and rushing water. "Do you remember the sound of my ribs cracking while you poured gravy over the turkey?"
"Emily... please..." she choked out, a line of dark blood bubbling from the corner of her lips.
"You told me I brought it on myself," I said softly, my voice cutting through the mechanical chaos of the dying ship. "You watched him hit me, and you told me it was my fault."
I reached down and peeled her cold, wet fingers off my ankle, one by one. She tried to hold on, her knuckles white with desperate effort, but her strength was gone.
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"You brought this on yourself, Eleanor," I said.
I stood up, stepped over her reaching hand, and hit the manual lock on the heavy watertight door. The hydraulic pistons hissed, and the massive slab of reinforced steel slammed shut, sealing Eleanor Sterling inside the drowning room with the shattered glass and the ghosts of her empire.
