Chapter 9 - The Glass Laboratory
The interior corridors of the Leviathan looked less like a ship and more like a sterile, subterranean research facility.
White antiseptic paneling lined the steel bulkheads, and the hum of industrial air scrubbers sucked the salt smell away, replacing it with the sharp odor of bleach and iodine.
Marcus and I moved silently through the lower deck corridor, clearing each watertight hatch with suppressed weapons raised.
Two armed guards standing outside the primary laboratory didn't even have time to raise their submachine guns before Marcus dropped them with clean, double-tap shots to the chest.
I kicked open the heavy stainless steel door marked ICU - RESTRICTED ACCESS.
The room beyond was divided by a floor-to-ceiling wall of soundproof observation glass.
Inside the glass enclosure, small surgical lamps cast a glaring, clinical white light over a pediatric operating table.
Leo was strapped to the center of that table by heavy velcro restraints across his chest and ankles.
His small face was pale, his eyes wide with utter terror as a female anesthesiologist in scrubs adjusted an intravenous drip beside his arm.
On the other side of the glass, sitting in a high-tech motorized wheelchair surrounded by banks of heart monitors and dialysis machines, was a frail, skeletal figure.
His skin was paper-thin and covered in liver spots, his bald head mapped with bulging blue veins.
A clear cannula was taped beneath his nose, feeding oxygen into his failing lungs.
It was Marcus Vance.
The monster of my childhood had aged into a living corpse, held together by titanium braces, synthetic hormones, and stolen blood.
Beside him stood three private mercenaries armed with tactical carbines, their sights instantly swinging toward the doorway as we entered.
“Ethan,” Marcus Vance’s voice crackled through an overhead intercom speaker, raspy, wet, and filled with disgusting amusement.
“I wondered if my eldest wolf would track the scent of blood all the way to the open sea.”
“Step away from the boy, Marcus,” I said, my gun pointed squarely through the observation glass at the center of the old man’s forehead.
“The glass is three inches of laminated polycarbonate, Ethan,” the old man wheezed, a pathetic, whistling laugh shaking his frail ribs.
“You could fire a grenade launcher at this barrier and only succeed in deafening yourself.
Look at him, Ethan.
Look at the boy’s veins.
They carry the purest Vance bloodline—untainted by the rot that is eating my marrow.”
On the operating table, Leo heard my voice and struggled wildly against the straps, crying out through his tears.
“Uncle Ethan! Uncle Ethan, help me!” he screamed, his little hands reaching out into the empty air.
“You see?” the old man sneered, his yellowed eyes narrowing with malicious pride.
“He knows you are his uncle.
Clara taught him well.
She ran for five years, living in rat holes and abandoned warehouses across four states, all to keep my medicine away from me.
And in the end, she delivered him right to your doorstep, knowing your ridiculous, pathetic guilt would lead you both right into my hands.”
“You lied to us for twenty years,” I said, keeping my weapon steady, my eyes scanning the ceiling conduits for the room’s primary oxygen and electrical junction box.
“You told me she died in an arson fire.
You handed me an urn of dirt.”
“Because you were dangerous, Ethan!” Marcus Vance spat, his voice rising in sudden, trembling rage.
“Even at fourteen, you looked at me with those cold, calculating eyes!
You were a stray dog I picked up from the county shelter to run my illegal courier routes!
I needed Clara compliant, and she would never submit to the harvesting program while her attack dog was guarding the kennel door!”
He lifted a trembling, skeletal hand and pressed a button on his wheelchair armrest.
Inside the glass enclosure, the surgical pump whirred to life, a thick plastic tube slowly filling with dark red fluid drawn from Leo’s arm.
Leo let out a piercing, agonized shriek that cut through the glass like a razor.
“Ethan, look at me!” Marcus Vance roared, his lips pulling back over gray teeth.
“His life buys me five more years!
Five more years to rebuild my shipping syndicate and erase your pitiful little empire from Manhattan!
You can do nothing but watch him drain!”
“Marcus,” I whispered into my tactical mic.
“Kill the ship’s main generator now.”
Ten decks below us in the engine room, Marcus Vance’s private yacht had already been wired with six blocks of high-grade plastic explosives by our boarding team.
Marcus’s voice clicked in my ear: “Fire in the hole.”
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A bone-rattling underwater explosion ripped through the keel of the Leviathan.
The entire two-hundred-foot ship lurched violently to port, throwing the guards against the bulkhead as the lights instantly died, plunging the surgical bay into absolute, terrifying darkness.
