Ready for what happens next? Continue to Chapter Two below.

The cavernous dock had descended into absolute, violent chaos.

Heavy gunfire echoed off the high concrete walls as Jackson engaged a squad of Aegis contractors near the bow of the tugboat, his heavy rifle barking in steady, controlled bursts. The thick white smoke billowed continuously from our canisters, blinding the enemy's automated turret systems and turning their numerical superiority into a frantic, disorganized liability.

I surged up the metal stairs leading to the high command platform, my boots clattering against the steel grating.

A heavy-set Aegis operator stepped out from behind a concrete pillar, raising a short-barreled shotgun aimed straight at my chest. I didn't slow down. I ducked beneath his sightline, driving my left shoulder hard into his midsection, pinning him against the steel railing before driving my combat knife straight into the joint of his tactical vest. He let out a wet gasp, his shotgun dropping into the dark water below as his body collapsed onto the walkway.

I kicked his weapon aside and broke into a sprint toward the submarine's main access tower.

General Vance was twenty feet ahead of me, his black trench coat flapping behind him as he desperately tried to haul his heavy body up the final ladder leading to the submarine's upper deck hatch. The two scientists in lab coats were already cowering on the pier below, having dropped their silver bio-transport cases to save themselves.

"VANCE!" I screamed.

Vance spun around on the ladder, pulling a compact nickel-plated pistol from his jacket and firing frantically down the stairs. The first bullet cracked past my left ear, shattering a light fixture behind me in a shower of sparks; the second round tore through the soft fabric of my tactical jacket, grazing my right collarbone with a searing line of heat.

I didn't even register the pain.

I closed the distance in two massive strides, grabbing Vance by the back of his trench coat and yanking him backward off the ladder with violent force.

He fell hard onto the steel platform with a heavy, breath-stealing impact, his pistol skittering across the metal deck and falling thirty feet into the dark bay water below.

I planted my tactical boot directly onto his chest, pinning him to the deck, and pressed the cold, square barrel of my primary rifle straight into the center of his forehead.

"End of the line, General," I growled, my chest heaving as blood from my shoulder wound seeped slowly down my chest.

Vance lay on his back, his grey hair wild, his expensive suit ruined, gasping frantically for air under the weight of my boot. But despite the barrel pressed against his skull, a sudden, horrifying smile began to spread across his bleeding lips.

"You... you think you've won, don't you, Samson?" Vance wheezed, blood trickling from his broken nose. "You think you're the hero of this story... saving your little girl from the big bad military machine."

"Shut your mouth," I said, thumbing the rifle's safety off.

"Shoot me!" Vance laughed, a manic, raspy sound that echoed unnervingly through the smoke. "Go ahead! Pull the trigger, Samson! But it won't change a single thing! The upload sequence was completed twenty minutes before your tugboat ever touched this pier!"

My grip on the rifle tightened. "What upload sequence?"

"The Vanguard baseline... Chloe's genetic encryption keys!" Vance cackled, pointing a trembling finger toward a glowing blue server rack mounted inside the command room at the end of the platform. "We didn't need the physical child to harvest the sequence today, Samson! The extraction your wife performed on your driveway yesterday was the final physical phase! All the raw biological data was digitized and transmitted to the central server bank half an hour ago!"

My blood turned to pure ice.

"Who received it?" I demanded, driving my boot deeper into his sternum until his ribs groaned. "WHO RECEIVED THE DATA?!"

Vance choked, his face turning purple, but his eyes were filled with insane triumph. "The buyer... the man who built the initiative from day one... the man who financed your entire military career..."