Ch.55: The Medical Wing Breached

I didn't take the stairs. I knew the weight of the silver card in my pocket would still trigger the silent alarms in the elevator. Instead, I sprinted through the shadows of the banquet kitchen and used a heavy fire extinguisher to shatter the glass of the West Wing's emergency reinforced door.

The alarm was a secondary thought, drowned out by the screams from the lawn. I burst into the medical wing, my lungs burning with the scent of ozone and copper. I didn't head for the nursery first—I headed for the heart of the system.

I slammed the fire extinguisher into the keypad of the high-security cryo-lab. The plastic casing exploded, and the heavy steel door hissed open as the magnetic seal de-energized.

I stepped inside, my boots skidding on the sterile epoxy.

"One step more and you're dead, Elena."

Isabella stood by the central harvest console. She wasn't the regal hostess anymore. Her hair was disheveled, her silk gown stained with a dark, oily fluid I recognized as Julian's necrotic discharge. In her hand, she held a small, matte-black semi-automatic.

The barrel was pointed directly at my sternum.

Behind her, Julian was strapped into the chair, a series of thick tubes connecting his neck to the centrifuge. Daisy’s bassinet was docked beside him, the red lights of the extractor pulsing like a countdown to her execution.

"Step away from the console, Isabella," I rasped, my hand sliding into my waistband.

"You think you’ve won because Leo played the martyr?" she hissed, her voice trembling with a jagged, manic edge. "Julian needs the exchange now. If I stop the cycle, his heart will stop. And if his heart stops, I lose everything."

She raised the weapon, her eyes wide and bloodshot. She had the look of a gambler who had bet her soul and was watching the wheel stop on black. I took a step forward, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.

I watched her finger tighten on the trigger. But as I closed the distance, the barrel of the gun dipped. The heavy steel began to vibrate.

Isabella’s hand was shaking. Not from fear, but from the same cellular tremors I’d seen in Julian before the rot took hold. The ageless goddess was finally fracturing. The "perfect" subject was rejecting the serum.

I pulled the syringe of concentrated adrenaline from my waistband, holding it like a dagger.

"Shoot me," I said, my voice as cold as the dry ice in the cryo-vats. "And watch him die."