Chapter 159 - The Architect’s Marionette
Vance was engaging the outer perimeter.
The low, rhythmic bark of his suppressed rifle was met by the violent chatter of multiple submachine guns—PDWs firing high-velocity rounds through the oak paneling. The walls groaned as plaster and splintered wood rained down onto the parquet.
Sarah didn't look toward the gunfire.
With a movement so fast it seemed non-human, she caught the edge of the heavy mahogany dining table and flipped it onto its side with a single, explosive thrust.
The crystal shattered into thousands of glittering shards. Silverware clattered against the floor. Eleanor’s corpse, ripped from its wiring, tumbled sideways like a broken department-store mannequin, its synthetic skin tearing along the jawline to reveal gleaming titanium armature beneath.
Before I could adjust my sight picture, Sarah was inside my guard.
Her palm struck the bottom of my chin with the force of a hydraulic ram. My teeth slammed together, cutting my tongue, the taste of copper exploding in my mouth. My head snapped back, stars bursting across my vision as my shot went wild, punching a hole through the ceiling plaster.
I stumbled back, my boots catching on the edge of the Greenwich floorboards.
She didn't fight like a street brawler, and she didn't fight like an operative. She fought with the terrifying, economical precision of a surgeon who knew every fracture point in my skeletal structure. Her knee drove into my floating ribs—the same ribs my father had cracked three Thanksgivings ago.
A white-hot burst of agony flared through my chest. The breath was knocked entirely out of me.
I fell hard onto my back, my sidearm sliding across the polished floor, stopping inches from Eleanor’s outstretched, frozen hand.
Sarah stood over me, her breathing calm, not a single hair out of place.
"You relied on anger," she said, looking down at me with cold disappointment. "Anger is an inefficient fuel. It creates predictable trajectories. It leaves the lower flank unprotected."
She stepped forward, her heel coming down toward my throat.
I didn't try to block it. I rolled hard to my left, sweeping my leg across the floor to catch her ankle.
She anticipated the sweep, leaping lightly over my foot, but the split-second gave me the space I needed. My hand swept into my coat, coming out not with a gun, but with the heavy, steel-cased satellite transceiver Arthur had kept in his bunker.
As she landed, I drove the corner of the steel case directly into her kneecap.
A sickening crunch echoed through the candlelight.
Sarah let out a sharp, ragged gasp—the first human sound she had made since I walked into the house. Her leg gave way, and she dropped to one knee on the broken glass.
"You think you’re an improvement," I wheezed, pushing myself up from the floor, my ribs screaming with every micro-expansion of my lungs. Blood dripped from my chin onto the white silk of my blouse. "You think you're the refined version because you grew up in a laboratory without the bruises."
I stepped forward, driving a straight right hand into her jaw, using all the leverage of my hips, all the weight of ten years of survival.
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Her head whipped sideways. Blood—crimson, biological, human blood—splattered across the cheek of Eleanor’s silicone face.
"You don't understand what those six words did to me," I hissed, leaning over her as she reached for a broken silver carving knife on the floor. "They didn't break me, Sarah. They severed me. They made sure that when the time came to kill my own blood, my hands wouldn't shake."
