Chapter 104 The Shared Blood

Chapter 104 The Shared Blood
Marcus

"Let her go!" I shouted, tumbling down the escalator steps.

My body felt like it was made of lead. The blue lines on my arms were dark, empty tracks against my skin, but the sight of Mason’s metal hand squeezing Sarah’s neck made me forget the exhaustion.

The black robot didn't squeeze hard enough to snap her neck, not yet. It just lifted her off her feet, her boots kicking uselessly in the empty air. Her iron wrench hit the marble floor with a loud clang.

"You never did look at the bigger picture, Marcus," Mason’s smooth voice buzzed from the machine’s chest speaker. "Silas thought he could use the Board to replace me. The Board thought they could use my brother’s designs to replace everyone. But I built the backdoors into these systems before your father even drew the first blueprints."

On the floor, Silas let out a ragged, bloody groan. He looked up at the robot that had just betrayed him, his single human eye wide with absolute shock. "Mason... we had a deal. The northern sectors—"

"Deals are for people who can't take what they want," Mason cut him off coldly.

The second black robot stepped forward, its heavy boot coming down directly onto Silas’s chest with a sickening crunch. Silas gasped, his body going completely limp as his cybernetic chest plates shattered into a hundred smoking pieces. Just like that, the man who had hunted my family for years was cast aside like garbage.

He’s going to kill us all, the thought hit my brain with a wave of pure ice. He doesn't care about the signal. He doesn't care about the Board. He just wants to clean the slate.

"Marcus... run," Sarah choked out, her face turning a dangerous shade of red as she clawed at the robot’s heavy metal wrist.

"I'm not running," I spat, my voice shaking with a deep, burning hatred. I looked straight into the yellow eyes of the machine holding her. "You want the network, Uncle? You want the code? You need my blood to run it. If you kill her, I'll smash my own skull against this marble before you can touch me."

Sarah

The cold metal of the hand was crushing my windpipe. I couldn't get any air into my lungs. The smoky lobby was starting to spin in a dark circle, and the bright neon signs outside looked like blurry streaks of paint.

Through the haze, I saw Marcus standing there. He looked completely broken, his clothes torn to rags and his body covered in blood, but his eyes were blazing with a terrifying, desperate fire. He was offering his own life to save mine.

No, I thought, a sharp pang of grief striking my chest. We didn't come this far just for him to give up.

"A brave speech, Nephew." Mason's voice chuckled from the speaker. "But you're lying. You have your father's curse. You care too much about these lower-sector street rats. If I start crushing this girl's throat millimetre by millimetre, you will do exactly what I tell you to do."

To my left, near the base of the crushed cage, Jax let out a low growl. He was clutching his bleeding shoulder, his face white from pain, but he was slowly dragging himself toward the fallen mini-gun Silas had dropped. He looked at me, his eyes screaming a silent warning.

Hold on.

I gathered the absolute last bit of strength in my legs and kicked forward, my heavy boot striking the robot's central chest seam. It didn't damage the thick armor, but it shifted the machine’s weight backward by an inch.

"Jax, shoot!" I wheezed out.

Marcus

Jax didn't aim for the head. He didn't aim for the arms. He unleashed a short, brutal burst from the mini-gun straight into the floorboards beneath the robot’s feet.

The marble tiles, already cracked from the helicopter crash, completely disintegrated.

The heavy black machine let out a mechanical drone as the floor gave way. It dropped three feet into the sub-floor structure, its grip on Sarah loosening just enough for her to slip free. She fell to the ground, coughing violently as she rolled away from the edge of the pit.

"Get the kid!" Jax roared, his wounded arm shaking as the heavy gun kicked against his chest. He turned the barrel toward the third robot, firing a wall of bullets that sent sparks flying through the dark lobby.

I sprinted toward Sarah, grabbing her jacket and pulling her toward the back escalator. Behind us, the second robot was already recovering, its heavy red eyes snapping back into a bright, murderous yellow as Mason re-established the override link.

"We can't go down!" Sarah gasped, her throat bruised and bleeding. "The soldiers are still outside!"

"We go to the service lift," I said, my heart hammering. I scooped Maya up into my left arm. The little girl was completely limp, her breathing so shallow I could barely feel her chest moving against mine. "The old shipping tunnels lead straight back below the wall."

We scrambled up the broken escalator steps, Jax covering our rear with the heavy gun until the ammunition counter hit zero with a dry, hollow click. He dropped the weapon, stumbling up the stairs behind us just as the remaining two black machines leaped out of the floor pit.

We burst through a heavy set of metal double doors at the top of the platform, entering a dark, narrow corridor filled with thick utility pipes. At the very end of the hall, the green light of a cargo elevator was blinking slowly.

"We're almost there!" Jax panted, his hand pressed hard against his bleeding shoulder.

Before we could take three steps, the steel wall to our right exploded inward.

A massive, black metal fist punched straight through the reinforced concrete, grabbing Jax by his good arm and slamming him bodily against the opposite wall with a force that rattled my teeth.

The third black robot stepped through the ruined wall, its yellow eyes glowing in the narrow corridor like twin lanterns. But it wasn't alone. Standing right behind the machine, his face completely pale and his expensive suit covered in white dust, was Mason Thorne himself. He hadn't just stayed in his ship. He had followed his machines into the dark.

In his right hand, Mason held a small, sleek silver cylinder that looked exactly like the device Julian had given us, but this one was pulsing with a bright, angry crimson light.

"The game is over, Marcus," Mason said, his voice quiet and completely devoid of any family warmth. He pointed the crimson device straight at Maya’s head. "This is a core extractor. If you don't step into that elevator and leave the child, I will pull the chip out of her brain along with her brain stem."

Mason has trapped them in the narrow hallway! With Jax pinned to the wall and a weapon pointed at Maya's head, will Marcus abandon the child to save his friends?