Chapter 66 - The Black Vault of Genesis
Arthur stepped through the threshold, his shotgun leveled directly at the man's heart. "Thomas."
The man with the cane didn't even flinch. He didn't look at the barrel of the 12-gauge. He merely raised an eyebrow, his smile fading into an expression of mild, patronizing exhaustion.
"Still carrying that agricultural tool, Father?" the man—Thomas—said, his voice smooth as silk. "You spent fifty years hiding in the woods, pretending to be a simple ridge-runner, while the world we designed moved on without you."
"Thomas?" I whispered, my brain struggling to process the connection. "Arthur... you said Richard was your only son."
"Richard was the middle child," Arthur muttered, his finger tightening on the trigger, the veins in his forearm bulging with strain. "He was the fool. The brute. But Thomas... Thomas was the one who signed the contracts with the Department of Defense. He was the one who sold this family's blood to the Sovereign syndicate."
"I didn't sell it, Father," Thomas said, taking two slow steps toward us, the rubber tip of his cane clicking lightly against the raised computer floor. "I institutionalized it. When you stole Julian from the maternity ward in Baltimore, you thought you were rescuing him. You thought you were preserving his innocence. Look at him now."
Thomas gestured toward me with his leather-gloved hand.
"He just butchered his legal parents. He cleared three squads of my private contractors with military efficiency. You didn't raise a grandson, Arthur. You raised the weapon we designed him to be. You simply gave him an Appalachian accent."
"Where is the neurotoxin counter-agent?" I snarled, stepping past Arthur, my submachine gun raised and leveled between Thomas's eyes. "Give it to me, or I will paint this pristine floor with your brains."
Thomas looked down the barrel of my gun, and for a second, a flash of genuine pride flickered across his pale features.
"Console four. Blue drawer," Thomas replied smoothly. "The autoinjector is pre-loaded with atropine and the neural stabilization compound. Treat your friend, Julian. We have a great deal of work to do."
I backed away toward console four, keeping my weapon trained on him, while Arthur kept his shotgun locked on Thomas's chest. I found the blue compartment, smashed the glass seal with the butt of my weapon, and grabbed the spring-loaded pneumatic syringe.
I ran back to the doorway where Evelyn lay. She was barely breathing, her pulse a faint, fluttering whisper at the base of her throat. I drove the needle straight through the fabric of her tactical vest into the muscle of her thigh and slammed the thumb-plunger down.
The pneumatic hiss was loud in the silence.
For five agonizing seconds, nothing happened. Then, Evelyn's body arched off the floor with a violent, gasping heave. She sucked in a lungful of air, her eyes snapping wide open, her hands frantically clawing at the deck plates before her vision locked onto mine.
"Julian..." she wheezed, her voice raspy and broken.
"I've got you," I said, pulling her into a sitting position against the bulkhead. "Stay here. Don't move."
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I stood up, racked the bolt of the submachine gun, and turned back toward the center of the vault.
"Now," I said, my voice echoing off the curved steel walls. "Tell me what the Seventh Key actually unlocks."
