Chapter 7 - Blood on the Ice
The grate smashed into the legs of an armed mercenary standing over the opening, shattering his shins with a sickening crack.
Before he could scream, Prescott rose through the gap and drove a combat blade upward through the soft tissue beneath the man's jaw, cutting off his vocal cords in an instant.
I erupted from the hole like a specter from hell.
The crypt was bathed in the harsh, blue-white glare of portable construction lamps. Four men in tactical gear were clustered around Genevieve's raised marble sarcophagus. At the far end stood Julian Croft, dressed in a custom charcoal wool overcoat, holding a silver walking stick.
"Mercer!" a mercenary yelled, raising an MP5.
I didn't give him the chance to level the barrel. I fired two suppressed rounds through his chest plate, the subsonic slugs punching through Kevlar, dropping him instantly onto the marble floor.
Prescott rolled left, firing three rapid shots that eliminated the second guard near the altar.
The third guard dove behind a marble pillar, blindly firing a burst of 9mm rounds that ricocheted violently off the carved stone walls, throwing chips of ancient granite into my face.
I advanced through the ricochets without flinching. When he leaned out to acquire his target, I slammed the butt of the Benelli shotgun into his temple. Bone cracked. He crumpled to the floor, lifeless.
Silence slammed back down over the tomb, thick and suffocating.
The air smelled of copper, cordite, and pulverized marble.
Julian Croft hadn't moved. His back was pressed against the heavy bronze gate of the inner sanctum. His silver walking stick trembled against the floor. The arrogance that had defined him for forty years had evaporated, leaving behind a terrified old man whose money had finally run out of leverage.
"Lawson," Croft stammered, raising both hands, palms forward. "Listen to me... Lawson, you don't understand the full picture."
I walked toward him, the barrel of my weapon lowered at my side, my boots stepping through the pooling blood of his security team.
"Where is it, Julian?"
"I can save them!" Croft cried, his voice pitching high, cracking with desperation. "Yates was wrong—he didn't have the final sequence! Genevieve split the patent! If you kill me, the secondary enzyme formula dies with me! Your children will be dead by sunrise!"
"You're lying," a voice echoed from the mausoleum entrance.
Elena Ward walked into the crypt. Her coat was flecked with snow; her hands were wrapped around an insulated cryogenic transport container she had pulled from Viktor’s vehicle.
"Genevieve didn't split the formula with you, Julian," Elena said, her eyes burning with pure contempt. "She knew you were a parasite who didn't understand the basic molecular biology. She locked the master stabilizer inside the central console."
Elena stepped toward the marble sarcophagus. She looked at the digital biometric terminal embedded into the base of Genevieve's resting place. The LED screen glowed a pale, accusatory red: *SYSTEM LOCKED. BIOMETRIC KEY REQUIRED.*
"Lawson," Elena whispered, her voice breaking. "The scanner."
I stepped up to the console.
For two years, I had refused to visit this place. For two years, I had convinced myself that Genevieve was gone, that my grief was a weakness that would leave my children vulnerable. I had built glass walls, hired private armies, and bought weapons—all to hide from the reality that the woman I loved had died protecting a secret I had been too blind to see.
I leaned down and pressed my right eye against the optical scanner.
A green laser line swept across my pupil.
*BIOMETRIC KEY ONE ACCEPTED: MERCER, LAWSON.*
*AWAITING GENETIC CONFIRMATION.*
I opened the palm-print scanner below the lens, took Genevieve's silver necklace from my pocket, and pressed the tiny blue stone into the recessed circular indentation on the console.
The stone wasn't jewelry. It was a synthetic sapphire data-capsule containing Genevieve's biological cryptographic key.
A soft, pneumatic hiss echoed through the crypt.
The heavy marble slab on the sarcophagus slid backward by four inches. A refrigerated compartment rose smoothly from the stone base, venting a plume of chilled liquid nitrogen mist into the warm, blood-spattered air.
Inside the cradle lay three small, amber glass ampules.
Each ampule was labeled in Genevieve's neat, elegant handwriting:
*Jonah. Blythe. Life.*
I stared at them, my breath hitching in my chest. Tears blurred my vision, hot and uncontrollable, washing away the blood and grit on my cheeks.
"She did it," Elena sobbed, dropping to her knees beside the stone. "She saved them."
Behind me, a metallic click echoed through the chamber.
I spun around instantly.
Julian Croft had pulled a small, two-shot derringer from the handle of his walking stick. His hand was shaking violently, his bloodshot eyes wild with the madness of a man who realized his empire was turning to dust.
"You won't leave this room with those vials, Lawson!" Croft screamed. "That formula belongs to Croft-Mercer! It's worth billions! I spent twenty years building this company! I won't let you give it away to two dying brats!"
He aimed the tiny barrel straight at the cryogenic cradle. Straight at my children's only hope.
I didn't raise my gun.
I covered the five feet between us in half a heartbeat.
I grabbed his wrist and twisted it upward until the radius bone snapped through the skin with a sickening crunch. Croft shrieked, dropping the gun. Before his scream could echo, my left hand closed around his throat, lifting his feet clean off the marble floor and slamming him against the granite wall beneath my father’s family crest.
"My children aren't brats, Julian," I snarled, my face inches from his purple, suffocating features. "They are Mercer blood. And their mother sends her regards."
I drove my combat blade through his femoral artery.
Croft gasped, his eyes bulging as the life began draining out of him in heavy, dark pulses across the white stone floor. I dropped him into the corner, not waiting to watch him die.
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"Elena," I barked, grabbing the cryogenic cradle. "The BearCat. Move!"
***
