Chapter 14 - THE SINKING OF THE ACHERONThe impact threw everyone off their feet.
Evelyn Cross lost her footing, her gun firing wild into the ceiling as she crashed into an equipment rack.
Gabriel lunged across the tilted floor, tackling Evelyn before she could recover her weapon, knocking the chrome pistol skittering into the dark corridor.
Claire strained against her restraints as the ship groaned in mortal agony, seawater thundering into the lower decks with the roar of a hundred waterfalls.
“Gabriel!” Claire cried out as the table tilted dangerously toward the buckling bulkhead.
Gabriel threw Evelyn off him and scrambled to the surgical table. With shaking fingers, he found the manual release pins on Claire’s wrist and ankle cuffs, yanking them free.
Claire tumbled into his arms. Her legs gave out from the partial anesthetics, but Gabriel scooped her up, holding her tightly against his chest.
“I have you,” he gasped. “I’m not letting go.”
Evelyn pulled herself up from the floor, clutching her broken collarbone, her face twisted in psychotic fury. She produced a tactical blade from her boot.
“You won't leave this ship alive!” Evelyn shrieked, lunging toward Gabriel’s exposed back.
A loud gunshot cracked from the doorway.
Evelyn froze. A neat, red hole blossomed in the center of her chest.
She collapsed backward onto the flooding linoleum floor, her cold eyes staring blankly at the emergency strobes above as the water rose around her.
Henri stood in the doorway, holding a smoking pistol, his face smeared with grease and soot from the engine room explosion.
“That was for my father,” Henri said coldly.
He looked at Gabriel and Claire. “The lower hull is completely split! We have three minutes before this deck is completely submerged!”
Water was already swirling around their knees, freezing and dark, carrying chemical debris and broken glass.
Gabriel supported Claire, while Henri took her other arm. Together, the three of them fought their way up the tilting stairwells as the Acheron died beneath their feet.
Bulkheads crumpled under the immense hydrostatic pressure. Alarms wailed their final, frantic death songs.
They reached the main exterior deck just as the ship’s stern rose high into the night sky, its massive propellers spinning uselessly in the rain-swept air.
Fifty yards away, fighting the treacherous shoals with masterful precision, was the Santa Maria.
Captain Alvarez had brought the wooden freighter directly alongside the sinking leviathan’s lower starboard railing, throwing heavy mooring lines to keep the vessels bridged.
Madeleine stood at the freighter’s railing, reaching out with frantic hands. “Claire! Gabriel! Jump!”
Henri helped Gabriel lift Claire over the shattered railing of the Acheron.
With one final surge of strength, Gabriel tossed Claire across the narrow chasm of churning water into the waiting arms of Captain Alvarez and Madeleine.
“Now you, Henri!” Gabriel shouted, grabbing his brother-in-law’s shoulder.
Henri looked at the freighter, then looked down at his own side.
Gabriel gasped.
Soaked in black oil and rainwater, Henri’s jacket was drenched in dark, heavy blood. During the firefight in the engine room, a mercenary’s bullet had torn straight through his liver.
“Henri… you’re hit!” Gabriel cried, trying to pull him toward the rail.
“I’m not going to make it, Gabriel,” Henri coughed, bright crimson foam spilling past his lips as he slumped against the railing. “The engine… the secondary charges didn't detonate automatically. I had to trigger the manual fuse by hand.”
“No! We leave together!” Gabriel yelled, grabbing Henri’s collar.
“Listen to me!” Henri gripped Gabriel’s wrists with the last strength in his dying body. “Tell Claire… tell her I’m sorry. Tell her that when I gave her that glass of water… I really thought I could save her. I wanted to be the brother she deserved.”
Henri shoved Gabriel violently backward across the railing.
Gabriel tumbled through the air, crashing hard onto the wet deck of the Santa Maria.
“HENRI!” Claire’s scream tore through the storm as she watched from the freighter’s wheelhouse.
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Henri stood alone on the burning, sinking deck of the Acheron.
He smiled—a peaceful, heartbreaking smile—and raised a hand in farewell just as the massive research vessel broke in half with a deafening roar of tearing steel, plunging beneath the black waves of the Atlantic, dragging the sins of the Black Anchor Consortium down into the eternal, silent deep.
