THE MORNING AFTER GRANDPA'S FUNERAL, MY PARENTS CAME TO STEAL HIS HOUSE. THEY NEVER EXPECTED THE MAN WAITING BEHIND HIS STUDY DOOR / Chapter 98 / 118

Chapter 98 - The Abyss Stares Back

Augustus didn't even look at me. With his free hand, he backhanded me across the jaw with enough hydraulic force to shatter my tactical helmet, sending me skidding across the hardwood floor into the bookshelf. Books, schematics, and brass instruments rained down around me.

Victoria fired three point-blank shotgun rounds into Augustus's back. The buckshot sparkled harmlessly off the reinforced titanium plates of his exo-suit, barely slowing the machine down.

Augustus reached out, caught the barrel of Victoria’s shotgun, twisted it completely out of shape, and threw her across the room into the communications terminal. She lay motionless, knocked unconscious by the violent impact.

"Authenticate," Croft commanded, pressing his pistol against Richard's temple. "Press your palm to the glass, Richard. End this dynasty."

Richard was suffocating, his eyes bulging as the steel fingers crushed his windpipe. His hand was hovering inches above the green biometric plate.

Through the blur of pain, I saw my father look at me. For the first time in my life, there was no cowardice in his eyes. There was no greed, no hesitation, no pathetic longing for Arthur’s approval.

"Julian..." Richard choked out, a thin line of bloody froth escaping his lips. "The... the grandfather clock... twelve o'clock..."

Croft frowned, turning his head sharply toward the antique pendulum clock ticking quietly in the corner of the study. "What is he talking about?"

My eyes locked onto the clock.

The hands were frozen at twelve. Just like the one in Arthur's study on the mountain. But down here, beneath nine thousand pounds of hydrostatic pressure, twelve o'clock wasn't a time.

It was a firing pin.

I dragged my battered body across the floor, ignored the agony screaming through my broken ribs, and lunged toward the base of the clock. My fingers found the hidden release switch behind the cedar molding and yanked it with everything I had.

A hollow, metallic *THUNK* echoed through the foundations of the entire facility.

The holographic display above the desk violently scrambled into static. The green illumination on the biometric scanner died instantly, replaced by a flashing, blood-red warning that blared in Arthur Vance’s true, recorded voice:

**DEAD-MAN PROTOCOL CONFIRMED.**

**SCRAM DETONATION ARMED: T-MINUS NINETY SECONDS.**

**FACILITY CORE PURGE COMMENCING.**

Augustus froze, his optical sensors flashing erratically as the spinal cables linking him to the mainframe began to spark with catastrophic voltage. "Arthur... you coward... you wired the reactor to the foundation..."

Croft’s composure completely shattered. He dropped his gun, frantically hammering keys on the console. "Cancel override! Authorization Croft-Zero-Nine! Cancel!"

**AUTHORIZATION DENIED,** the computer roared back. **THE HOUSE OF VANCE FALLS TOGETHER.**

Suddenly, the floor beneath Croft gave way.

The mahogany desk collapsed into a yawning chasm of blue-white nuclear plasma as the cooling core below exploded upward in a blinding flash of raw energy. Augustus screamed—a terrifying, synthesized roar of rage—as the platform buckled, his heavy metallic frame tumbling down into the molten reactor abyss, dragging the screaming Harrison Croft down into the fire with him.

The shockwave blasted me backward.

The entire Core Study was tearing apart. The ceiling cracked, sheets of seawater pouring through the iron framework. The deafening alarms screamed of imminent, total implosion.

I scrambled through the blinding smoke and rising water, grabbing Victoria by her tactical vest with one arm and dragging my father with the other toward the only remaining egress hatch—the primary escape pod bay.

I shoved Victoria into the circular hatch of the pressurized two-man escape pod.

"Julian! Get in!" she screamed, coughing blood, her hand reaching out from inside the cockpit. "The reactor is going critical! We have twenty seconds!"

I turned to pull Richard inside.

My father was standing outside the hatch. He had already reached up and slammed down the heavy manual emergency seal on the outer airlock door, locking himself on the outside.

"Dad! What are you doing?!" I slammed my fists against the reinforced glass of the hatch. "Open the door! Dad!"

Richard looked at me through the quartz viewport, his bloody face calm, peaceful, smiling through the pouring water and smoke.

"Two-man pod, Julian," he said, his voice coming through the interior comm-speaker with heartbreaking clarity. "Victoria needs the seat. And Arthur was right... some debts can only be paid by the generation that incurred them."

"No! Open the hatch!" I screamed, desperately hunting for an override switch on my side.

"You're the only true Vance left, son," Richard whispered. "Survive. And burn the rest of their world down."

Richard slammed his bloody palm down on the pod's external launch lever.

The pneumatic locks released with an explosive roar.

The escape pod rocketed backward through the launch tube, propelled by five thousand pounds of compressed gas, shooting out into the freezing, pitch-black abyss of the Atlantic ocean just as Station Erebus detonated behind us in a blinding, catastrophic sphere of blue nuclear fire.

The shockwave caught the pod, tumbling us end over end through the crushing darkness of the deep sea. The cabin lights flickered, died, and switched to emergency amber.

Victoria was unconscious beside me.

Outside the viewport, the burning debris of Station Erebus sank slowly into the trench below.

I leaned my head against the cold steel hull, my chest heaving, the silence of the ocean depths pressing in around us. We had survived. Croft was dead. Augustus was destroyed. The conspiracy was wiped from the bottom of the sea.

Then, from the encrypted console between our seats, a low, mechanical tone chimed.

A single green light blinked to life on the navigation console.

The automated distress transmitter had not synced to the U.S. Coast Guard. It had linked to an unlisted, secure private server located deep within the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

A message appeared on the screen, typed in real-time, letter by chilling letter:

**WELCOME BACK TO THE SURFACE, JULIAN.**

**YOUR GRANDFATHER TAUGHT YOU WELL.**

**NOW, IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO TAKE YOUR SEAT AT THE TABLE.**