Chapter 660
Eliza gasped, her eyes flying wide. The shock of the cold was violent — like being plunged into a bath of crushed ice. Her core temperature plummeted. Her teeth chattered so severely she had to bite down on her lip to stay quiet.
“Heart rate down,” Cipher whispered, activating her own suit. “Move slow. Be ice.”
Eliza nodded. She dragged her freezing, stiff body forward.
She positioned herself over the vertical drop, gripped the edge of the duct, and slowly lowered her legs into the shaft.
The red laser beams hovered inches from her skin.
She held her breath. She descended inch by agonizing inch. A beam passed less than a millimeter from her cheek — she could see the red light reflected in the metal wall.
Her muscles trembled from the extreme cold and the physical strain. She ignored the pain. She fixed her mind entirely on Dallas’s face.
She cleared the last beam. Her boots touched the metal grate at the bottom of the shaft.
Cipher dropped down silently beside her.
Eliza peered through the grate slats. Directly below was a brightly lit, sterile white corridor.
Two heavily armed shadow guards paced past their position, assault rifles held at the ready.
Eliza waited until they turned the corner at the far end of the hall.
She tapped Cipher’s arm.
Cipher produced a silent electric screwdriver and quickly removed the four bolts holding the grate in place. They lowered the heavy metal cover to the floor without a sound.
Eliza dropped into the corridor, her boots hitting the white linoleum in silence. She reached up and unzipped the liquid cooling suit, letting it fall. The sudden return of warm air made her skin prickle with pins and needles.
She turned to face the end of the hall.
A massive, solid titanium door blocked their path. No handle. No keypad. Only a sleek black biometric scanner mounted on the wall, emitting a soft blue light.
This was it. The final barrier.
Eliza drew a slow breath. She walked up to the scanner, reached up with her fingers, and physically held her right eyelid open wide, exposing the bionic contact lens she had been enduring for the past hour.
She leaned forward, aligning her eye with the scanner’s lens.
A sharp beep echoed in the quiet corridor. A beam of intense blue light swept across her eyeball.
The system was running a complex, multi-layered biometric comparison against Beatrice Vance’s master file.
One second. Two. Three.
Eliza’s heart stopped. If the lens failed, the automated turrets in the ceiling would drop and tear them apart.
A soft, melodic chime sounded. The scanner’s light shifted from blue to solid green.
The heavy titanium doors hissed, broke their pressurized seal, and slid silently apart.
Eliza stepped inside.
It was a massive, circular chamber filled with cutting-edge medical technology. The air was cool and smelled of pure oxygen.
In the center of the room sat a large, cylindrical glass medical pod.
Dallas was inside.
He was stripped to the waist, his powerful torso submerged in a pale blue, luminescent healing fluid. Dozens of thin silver neural-link wires were attached to his temples, his chest, and his spine.
.
.
.