Chapter 161 - The Cliffhanger at Vault Zero
Arthur’s face drained of color for the first time. "You're lying. Richard didn't have the stomach for total destruction. He was weak!"
"My father wasn't weak," Vincent said, his voice dropping to a deathly whisper. "He was patient."
With a sudden, violent movement, Emma grabbed Vincent's left hand, while Vincent swung his right arm down toward the console.
"Marco—fire!" Vincent roared.
Marco stepped from behind the cooling coil and fired three rapid rounds directly into the primary hydraulic reservoir overhead. High-pressure hydraulic fluid sprayed over the catwalks, blinding the snipers and sending two of them crashing through the rusted safety rails to the concrete floor below.
Automatic gunfire instantly ripped through the chamber, sparks raining down like a shower of falling stars as bullets struck the brass consoles and shattered vacuum tubes in dazzling bursts of blue electrical fire.
Emma and Vincent lunged for the central console. In the center of the control pedestal were two distinct, circular bronze wells lined with microscopic lancets.
"Together," Emma whispered, looking into Vincent’s eyes.
There was no hesitation left between them. No distance, no lies, no ghosts of the past. Whatever sins their grandfathers had committed in the dark, they would finish tonight in the light.
They pressed their palms down simultaneously into the twin bronze wells.
The lancets bit deep.
A sharp, piercing chime chimed through the chamber, louder than the gunfire, vibrating through the massive iron pillars. The clatter of the mechanical relays stopped dead. The hundreds of glowing vacuum tubes shifted from a calm amber to a violent, pulsing crimson.
*BIOMETRIC CONVERGENCE CONFIRMED,* a synthetic, mechanical voice crackled through the antique PA horns mounted in the vault ceiling. *WARD PROTOCOL: ACCEPTED. MORETTI PROTOCOL: ACCEPTED. MASTER SCRAM SEQUENCE INITIATED.*
Arthur lunged forward, screaming an incoherent curse, raising his heavy cane to strike Emma down himself, but Marco broke from cover, tackling the old patriarch to the floor in a flurry of limbs and shattered wood.
Suddenly, the floor beneath their feet didn't just vibrate—it began to descend.
The entire circular console platform, carrying Vincent, Emma, Arthur, and Marco, detached from the upper foundry foundations, dropping into a deep, subterranean vertical silo that plunged into the earth beneath Lake Michigan.
Above them, through the receding square opening of the blast doors, Emma looked up and saw that the catwalks were collapsing into the flames of the ruptured dynamos.
Down, down, down the iron elevator platform plummeted, descending hundreds of feet into a forgotten world of subterranean darkness.
When the platform finally struck the bottom with a bone-jarring metallic crash, the emergency lights of the deep silo flickered on, bathing the cavern in an eerie, pale green glow.
Emma scrambled to her feet, her weapon drawn, Vincent rising beside her, his hand wrapped around hers, blood dripping from their joined palms onto the cold steel deck.
They weren't in a control room.
They were standing in an enormous, underground subterranean dry dock excavated beneath the bed of Lake Michigan.
And resting before them in the subterranean water, completely intact, bearing the markings of the United States Navy from 1972, was a massive, black-hulled nuclear-class submarine, its boarding ramps lowered, steam hissing from its cooling vents.
Standing at the top of the gangway, surrounded by two dozen silent, heavily armed figures in pristine naval dress uniforms, was a woman whose face made Vincent's breath catch in his throat, his hand trembling as he held Emma’s.
She was an older woman, elegant, carrying the unmistakable high cheekbones and striking dark eyes of the Moretti bloodline—a woman who wore the twin signet ring of the Sovereign on her right hand.
"Welcome home, Vincent," the woman said, her voice smooth, steady, and chillingly familiar. "Arthur was merely the decoy. I have waited fifty years for you to bring me the Ward bloodline."
Emma felt Vincent’s grip tighten to the point of breaking as he stared at the woman on the gangway.
May you like
"Mother?" Vincent whispered, his voice shattering in the darkness.
Before Vincent could take a step, the heavy blast doors at the top of the shaft slammed shut with the force of an artillery shell, sealing them hundreds of feet beneath the lake, as the countdown timer on the submarine’s conning tower began to tick down from sixty seconds.
