Chapter 8 - The Betrayal
Hadrian stares at his oldest friend in pure, heartbroken disbelief.
"Viper, what the hell are you doing?" he asks, his voice barely a whisper.
Viper keeps his hand perfectly steady, his finger resting firmly on the trigger.
"I'm sorry, brother, but twenty million dollars is enough to buy me a new life."
The Fiancée claps her hands in sheer delight, utterly enjoying the devastating betrayal.
"Loyalty is just a word poor people use to feel noble," she sneers maliciously.
She picks up an electronic tablet and tosses it onto the metal floor at Hadrian's feet.
"Sign the offshore trust funds over to me, or Viper paints this room with your brains."
Hadrian looks at Sorrel, who is sobbing quietly in the suspended steel cage.
He slowly drops his rifle and bends down to pick up the tablet.
He pretends to sign the document, his mind calculating angles and distances in fractions of a second.
Suddenly, he spins around and hurls the heavy tablet directly into Viper's face like a discus.
The sharp edge smashes into Viper's nose, causing the pistol to fire wildly into the ceiling.
Hadrian sweeps Viper's legs out from under him and delivers a crushing punch to his jaw.
The Fiancée screams in rage and lunges for a red emergency button on the control console.
"If I cannot have the money, we all die together!"
She slams her hand down on the button before Hadrian can reach her.
A computerized voice echoes through the massive room, sending chills down Hadrian's spine.
"Catastrophic pressure override initiated, total structural failure in three minutes."
Deep inside the bowels of the rig, massive explosive charges begin to detonate one by one.
The floor beneath them violently buckles, throwing everyone off their feet.
Hadrian scrambles toward the control panel, frantically searching for an override code.
The console sparks and dies completely, locking the steel cage in place over the abyss.
The rig tilts dangerously to the left, groaning loudly as the metal support pillars begin to snap.
A massive pipe bursts overhead, raining scalding hot water down upon the control room.
Through the steam and chaos, Viper slowly rises to his feet, pulling a serrated combat knife from his belt.
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He spits a mouthful of blood onto the grated floor, his eyes filled with absolute murder.
"You should have just died in the fire, Hadrian!" he screams over the blaring alarms.
