Chapter 15 - The Firefight
The deafening roar of heavy automatic gunfire violently shattered the sterile, terrifying silence of the hidden laboratory.
Julian moved with incredible, ghost-like speed, diving completely behind a massive, reinforced steel centrifuge while simultaneously returning highly accurate, lethal fire.
Two of Omar's heavily armored mercenaries instantly collapsed to the concrete floor, their tactical helmets completely shattered by Julian's suppressed pistols.
I grabbed the glowing vial of Project Genesis, frantically shoving the freezing, silver liquid deep into the heavily padded interior pocket of my blazer.
Jax stepped aggressively in front of me, using his massive body as a human shield while laying down a massive, deafening wall of suppressive rifle fire.
"We are completely boxed in, boss! There is absolutely no secondary exit from this cavern!" Jax roared over the chaotic noise of the firefight.
He was entirely right; my father had intentionally designed the laboratory as a highly secure, dead-end vault to prevent the weapon from ever being smuggled out.
I dropped heavily to the floor, crawling desperately behind the thick, titanium base of the breached safe.
Omar’s mercenaries heavily outnumbered us, and they were aggressively advancing, methodically tearing the pristine glass walls of the laboratory completely to shreds.
"Shoot the liquid nitrogen tanks!" Julian screamed from across the room, violently reloading his weapons in the dark shadows.
I looked up and saw three massive, pressurized metal tanks of liquid nitrogen strapped securely to the back wall of the laboratory.
Jax instantly understood the brilliant, highly suicidal strategy.
He violently swung his heavy assault rifle toward the tanks and held the trigger completely down in a sustained, deafening burst.
The high-caliber bullets easily pierced the thick metal, causing the highly pressurized, sub-zero liquid to explode violently into the enclosed cavern.
A massive, blinding cloud of freezing, white vapor instantly expanded across the room, completely plummeting the temperature to deeply lethal levels.
Omar’s mercenaries shrieked in absolute agony as the freezing gas aggressively instantly burned their exposed skin and completely blinded their thermal goggles.
"Move right now!" Julian commanded, appearing out of the freezing white fog like a terrifying phantom.
He grabbed my arm aggressively, pulling me violently through the chaotic, freezing cloud and directly past the blinded, writhing mercenaries.
We sprinted out of the ruined boiler room and heavily up the main concrete stairwell, entirely leaving the frozen death squad completely trapped in the sub-basement.
My lungs burned furiously with the freezing air, but the intense, overwhelming adrenaline pushed my body completely past its absolute physical limits.
We finally reached the hospital's ground floor, heavily bursting through the heavy fire doors and into the dark, abandoned main lobby.
The entire medical center had been completely evacuated by Jax’s security team during the initial breach, leaving the massive building eerily, terrifyingly silent.
We paused behind the heavy marble reception desk, desperately gasping for air as we checked our weapons and assessed the catastrophic damage.
Jax was bleeding heavily from a deep, jagged graze on his thigh, but his fierce, protective determination remained absolutely unbroken.
Suddenly, the massive glass doors of the main lobby slid smoothly open, letting in a chilling blast of freezing Chicago wind.
Sheikh Omar Al-Rashid walked calmly into the dark lobby, completely unarmed, wearing an impeccably tailored, pristine white suit.
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He was entirely alone, flanked by absolutely no guards, and he was smiling an incredibly dark, deeply victorious smile.
"You really should not have brought the weapon directly up to me, Mara," Omar chuckled, his voice echoing coldly off the marble floors.
