Chapter 13 - The Edge of the Void
The exterior glass wall blew outward in a hurricane of glittering shards and roaring wind.
Rain instantly flooded the penthouse laboratory, freezing air tearing through the ruined room like a living beast. Papers, medical trays, and broken glass were sucked out into the seventy-story drop toward the distant city streets.
The floor beneath their feet groaned—a horrific, metallic screech as the weakened steel girders began to buckle under the explosive damage. The entire northern corner of the penthouse tilted downward at a terrifying five-degree angle.
"Grab the support beam!" Marcus roared, dragging himself up from the shattered chemical shelf, his bleeding hand locking onto a structural column.
Clara threw herself over the examination tray, shielding the screaming baby with her entire body as loose equipment slid past them, tumbling out into the empty, rainy void. Althea lunged forward, grabbing Clara’s waist to anchor her against the sudden gravitational shift.
Julian stood near the shattered edge, his cashmere coat whipping wildly in the gale. His motorized leg brace had short-circuited from the rainwater, locking his knee in place. He looked down into the black abyss below, the madness in his eyes momentarily eclipsed by the primal terror of falling.
"Julian, drop the detonator!" Marcus shouted over the roar of the wind, taking a step along the tilted, rain-slicked floor. "The whole floor is coming down! If you blow the secondary charges, you die with us!"
"You took everything from me, Marcus!" Julian screamed, rain plastering his silver hair to his skull. "That sequence was worth billions! It was my legacy!"
"It was never yours!" Althea yelled against the storm. "It belonged to humanity! It belonged to my daughter!"
Julian looked at Althea, then down at Clara, who was desperately clinging to the table with one arm while pressing the child against her chest. A venomous, spiteful sneer twisted Julian’s face.
"Then she dies with me," Julian hissed.
He raised his concealed blade and lunged forward, ignoring his ruined leg, aiming the steel point directly at Clara and the infant.
Marcus didn't hesitate. He didn't reach for a weapon. He launched his entire body across the tilted floor, tackling his brother at the waist just as the blade descended.
The force of the impact carried both men across the wet marble, sliding violently toward the yawning precipice where the glass wall used to be.
"Marcus!" Clara screamed, her voice drowned by the thunder.
Marcus managed to snag his left hand around a severed hydraulic pipe protruding from the floor. His grip held, his muscles tearing under the violent strain.
Julian, however, slid completely over the edge.
The billionaire dangled seventy stories above the black asphalt of the city, his hands clutching desperately onto Marcus’s right forearm—the arm that was already sliced open, bleeding profusely into the rain.
"Marcus!" Julian gasped, his eyes wide with frantic, begging terror. "Hold on! Don't let go! We're brothers, Marcus! We share the same blood!"
Marcus looked down into the face of the man who had ordered death squads into a maternity ward, who had tried to murder an innocent newborn for corporate profit. Marcus felt the blood lubricating his skin, his fingers slipping millimeter by millimeter against the rain.
"You stopped being my brother a long time ago, Julian," Marcus said, his voice flat, cutting through the storm like ice.
"Please!" Julian shrieked.
May you like
Marcus opened his hand.
Julian Vance fell backward into the dark, churning clouds, his final scream swallowed entirely by the roar of the thunder.
