Chapter 45 - Blood in the Depths
"Brace!" Michael roared.
A beam of superheated thermite lanced through the water, scorching across the outer hull of the *Proteus*. The cabin filled with the deafening shriek of melting titanium.
Michael didn't hesitate. His decades of combat instinct took command. He seized the manual ballast control and purged the bow maneuvering thrusters at maximum burst. The sudden, violent jet of water knocked the lead mercenary off balance, tumbling him into the abyss.
Before the other two divers could adjust their aim, Michael hit the hatch release.
He didn't exit into the water. Instead, using the *Proteus's* robotic arm, he smashed the heavy claw into the knee joint of the second diver's exoskeleton. The pressurized suit imploded instantly under the hydraulic impact, the deep-sea pressure crushing the diver into an agonizing, instantaneous pulp of neoprene and shattered bone.
The third diver fired his plasma rifle directly into the robotic arm, severing the hydraulic cables in an explosion of sparks and bubbles.
Michael reached for his combat vest, pulling the pin on a specialized deep-sea acoustic concussive grenade—a weapon designed to shatter internal organs through hydrostatic shockwaves. He slid it through the ballast ejection tube and detonated it ten yards out.
The ocean bucked. A dull, thundering *CRACK* reverberated through the water.
The shockwave hit the remaining diver, shattering his acrylic helmet visor. The black ocean poured into the suit, and the mercenary went limp, sinking into the dark trench floor.
"Lucas, can you walk?" Michael yelled, turning back into the cabin.
"I can fight," Lucas replied, pulling a standard-issue 9mm sidearm from his pod’s survival kit.
"We aren't going up," Michael said, his eyes deadly, his jaw set in stone. "If they take that core, the tectonic shelf collapses, and the entire Eastern seaboard will be wiped out by a three-hundred-foot tsunami. We finish this where it started twenty-four years ago."
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Michael grabbed an atmospheric rebreather suit from the locker, strapped it over his broad shoulders, and stepped out onto the ancient, dry threshold of the monolith's airlock floor.
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