Chapter 109 - The Ghosts of the Deep
Julian Ward shrieked in agony, collapsing against the vault threshold, his blood pooling over the polished marble. The remaining strike team in the elevator corridor hesitated, caught off balance by the loss of their commander and the lethal blast of their own sovereign weapon.
"Marcus! Get up!" Vincent barked, tossing the spent railgun aside. His face was ghostly pale from blood loss, but his eyes were blazing with unholy fury.
Marcus groaned, pushing himself up against the wall, clutching his wounded shoulder with one hand while drawing his backup sidearm with the other. "Still breathing, sir. Helipad elevator is clear. Our gunship is inbound—two minutes out!"
Emma ran to Vincent’s side, wrapping her arms around his waist to support his weight. "We have to leave now! If what Julian said is true, they have an entire fleet approaching the city!"
"We aren't leaving Chicago," Vincent growled, leaning heavily against her but moving with relentless forward momentum. "This city belongs to the people who built it, not to a syndicate of ghosts hiding across the Atlantic. We take Julian with us. He’s our only bargaining chip."
Marcus grabbed the screaming, mutilated Julian Ward by his combat harness, dragging him roughly across the floor toward the emergency roof stairwell. Behind them, alarms began to screech as auxiliary generators in the tower struggled back to life under emergency protocols.
They pushed through the heavy rooftop fire doors, bursting out into the blinding fury of the blizzard.
The sight before them made Emma’s heart seize.
From the roof of the Moretti Tower, eighty stories above the street, the darkened void of Lake Michigan was no longer dark.
Five miles offshore, cutting through the floating sheets of winter ice, were the illuminated silhouettes of massive, gray stealth frigates—warships bearing no national flag, their radar arrays spinning silently against the snowy sky. Above the water, a swarm of heavy tactical drones circled like iron vultures, their searchlights scanning the freezing waves and painting the Chicago shoreline in cold geometric grids.
The Sovereign Council had arrived.
"God help us," Marcus muttered, staring at the armada through the swirling snow. "That isn't a mercenary raid. That's an invasion force."
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Suddenly, the roof shuddered. The heavy armored transport chopper bearing the Moretti insignia dropped out of the blizzard, its landing skids slamming down onto the helipad with a shower of ice.
"Get in!" the pilot’s voice screamed over the external loudspeaker. "They’ve locked surface-to-air missiles onto our transponder! We have sixty seconds before they paint this roof!"
