Chapter 77 - Depth of Shadows
The hatch slammed shut with a heavy pneumatic hiss.
I spun the manual locking wheel until the triple titanium dogs locked into place. Outside, the muffled thud of collapsing gantries and detonating scuttle charges vibrated through the submarine's pressure hull.
Victoria lunged toward the helm console, but Evelyn slammed the butt of her submachine gun across Victoria's temple, sending the Director sprawling across the rubberized deck of the control cabin.
"Sit down and shut up," Evelyn hissed, kicking Victoria's sidearm down the narrow access corridor.
I slid into the pilot's station. The console was terrifyingly complex, glowing with deep-sea navigational telemetry, sonar arrays, and engine management displays. But as my fingers touched the primary flight stick, my eyes caught the engraved brass plate set into the console:
*DESIGNED BY ARTHUR VANCE — BUILT FOR THE BLOOD.*
My hands moved autonomously. The muscle memory—drilled into me across hundreds of simulated puzzles Arthur had built into the basement mainframe back in Vance Ridge—took over.
I flipped three sequential master breakers: *Ballast Purge. Ion Drive Ignition. Hydraulic Disengage.*
The submarine dropped out of the moon pool like a stone, sinking into the abyssal blackness of the North Atlantic just as the Leviathan platform above detonated in a massive, muffled underwater shockwave.
The shockwave hit us at two hundred feet, rolling the submarine sixty degrees to port before the automated gyroscopes fought back, whining loudly as they leveled the vessel.
Inside the cabin, the only sound was our ragged breathing and the steady *ping... ping... ping* of the passive sonar array.
Victoria pulled herself up against the navigation table, wiping a smear of blood from her eyebrow. She looked at me, her eyes burning with cold rage.
"You think you've won, Julian?" she whispered. "You think you can just drive into the dark? The drive you hold in your pocket is keyed to the primary transmitter in this vessel. If you don't upload it to the global array within forty-eight hours, the Genesis Protocol self-destructs. The data will be wiped forever. The Syndicate will maintain their stranglehold on this planet, and your father's sacrifice—Arthur's sacrifice—will mean nothing."
I reached into my pocket, pulling out the silver hexagonal drive Arthur had died to protect.
"Arthur told me not to trust you," I said, staring at the flashing LED indicator on the drive. "He said you wanted to rule."
"I want order!" Victoria shouted, slamming her palm against the steel bulkhead. "Look at what freedom gave us! A father who sold out his children! A mother who signed off on your assassination for a seat on an offshore board! The world is chaotic, broken, and rotten. The Consensus was designed to manage it. To guide it. With you as the biometric anchor, and me as the tactical helm, we could remake everything."
"No," Evelyn said quietly, stepping up beside me, her weapon resting loose but ready in her hands. "That's not what Arthur wanted. He wanted the truth out. He wanted the slate wiped clean."
Suddenly, the sonar console issued a low, frantic chime.
*PING.*
A high-frequency return bounced off our hull.
I looked down at the tactical display.
We were passing through four thousand feet, entering the midnight zone of the oceanic trench.
May you like
On the digital map, five miles beneath us, something was moving.
***
