Chapter 59 - Shadows over Highgate
A flashbang grenade bounced across the parquet floor, sizzling with blinded fury.
I threw myself behind the heavy oak wardrobe just as the world inverted into white, deafening fire. The concussive shock rattled my teeth in my jaw, but the months I had spent anticipating my family's treachery had wired my reflexes beyond human panic.
I rolled out of the debris, raising my automatic.
Two figures clad in matte-black, unbranded tactical gear cleared the shattered balcony window, their assault carbines sweeping the room with lethal economy. These were not Black Sand mercenaries. Their movements were faster, entirely silent, their faces hidden behind seamless carbon-fiber ballistic masks.
I fired three rounds into the chest of the lead operator.
The heavy hollow-points struck his ceramic strike-plate, halting his momentum, and before he could recalibrate his aim, my fourth shot punched clean through the soft tissue beneath his jawline. He dropped like severed timber.
The second operator swung his barrel toward me, but a spray of medical monitors and stainless steel IV poles crashed into his side.
Sarah Sterling, in her dying convulsion, had ripped the oxygen lines from her throat and thrown her frail weight against the bedside cart, sending a cascade of machinery crashing into the shooter. It wasn't an act of maternal love; it was the final, vicious reflex of an apex predator refusing to die at the hands of another.
The distraction gave me half a second.
I closed the distance, grabbed the operator’s rifle barrel, forced it toward the ceiling as a three-round burst obliterated the plaster overhead, and drove my combat knife up through the junction of his neck armor.
He shuddered, his strength evaporating, and collapsed onto the shattered glass.
Behind me, Sarah Sterling collapsed against the edge of the bed, her breath rattling like dry leaves in a storm. She reached out, catching my coat sleeve with fingers like iron talons.
"The Thames," she choked out, dark blood spilling over her lips. "The old docks... Warehouse 44... The original paper ledgers... The digital systems are dead... You must burn the paper... or they will own... everything..."
Her grip suddenly slackened. Her eyes rolled back into her head, staring fixedly at the ceiling, as the heart monitor flatlined into a continuous, high-pitched scream.
Sarah Sterling was dead. Truly dead this time.
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In the hallway outside, the rhythmic, heavy thud of tactical boots echoed up the marble stairs. There were at least ten more coming.
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