Chapter 9 - The Final Breath
The hardened steel clamp struck Victor’s windpipe with a sickening crunch.
Victor let out a strangled, breathless choke, stumbling backward as his finger spasmed against the trigger of his rifle.
A burst of three rounds chewed through the concrete ceiling above us, showering sparks and dust across the floor.
Adrian moved like a predator unleashed from a cage.
He closed the gap between them before Victor could recover his balance.
Adrian’s right fist smashed into Victor’s jaw with the force of a battering ram, spinning the traitor around.
Victor’s rifle clattered away across the floor.
Victor pulled a combat blade from his tactical vest, slashing blindly through the dust.
The steel blade sliced deep across Adrian’s chest, tearing through his dress shirt and opening a crimson gash along his ribs.
Adrian did not even pause.
He caught Victor’s knife wrist with his left hand, twisted the joint until it snapped backward, and drove his knee violently into Victor’s sternum.
Victor collapsed against a steel structural pillar, gasping for air that would not come through his crushed trachea.
Adrian loomed over him, his face covered in sweat, blood, and gray dust.
"You forgot one thing, Victor," Adrian said, his voice a low, terrifying growl that resonated through the concrete chamber.
Victor looked up through swelling, terrified eyes.
"What...?" Victor choked out.
"I built this empire with blood," Adrian said, raising his heavy weapon.
"And you never had the stomach to take it from me."
Adrian pulled the trigger once.
The gunshot echoed like thunder inside the enclosed basement.
Victor went limp against the pillar, his eyes staring blankly at the overhead pipes before he slumped onto the cold floor.
Adrian did not look back.
He turned toward me, clutching his bleeding ribs, and rushed over to the iron boiler where Ethan lay.
I was already on my knees beside our son, breaking open the sterile syringe from the vault kit with trembling fingers.
I plunged the needle into the vial, drawing the blue liquid into the plastic cylinder.
"Ethan, baby, please," I sobbed, tears splashing onto his small, gray cheeks.
"Mommy's here."
"Daddy's here."
Ethan didn't move.
His skin was freezing cold to the touch.
The portable cardiac monitor beside him suddenly let out a flat, piercing, unending drone.
The green line on the miniature screen flattened into a horizontal plane of absolute zero.
"No!" I screamed, jamming the needle directly into the central line port on his neck.
I slammed the plunger down, sending the entire dose of the blue inhibitor flooding into his circulatory system.
Nothing happened.
The monitor continued its horrific, unending scream.
Adrian dropped to his knees beside me, discarding his weapon onto the concrete.
The man who had brought a city to its knees threw both hands onto Ethan’s tiny chest.
"Don't you dare leave us, Ethan!" Adrian roared, his voice breaking into raw, agonized sobs as he began chest compressions.
"Fight, damn you!"
"Look at me, son!"
"Fight for your mother!"
One compression.
Two compressions.
May you like
Three compressions.
The flatline continued its terrifying song of death.
