Chapter 6 - The Docks of Newark
The fog rolling off the Kill Van Kull waterway was so thick it swallowed the towering orange gantry cranes of the Port of Newark in a ghost-like haze.
It was 2:00 AM. The air smelled of salt, diesel exhaust, and wet rust.
Julian stood on the roof of a three-story shipping container overlooking Terminal 4. Rain had begun to fall—a fine, mist-like drizzle that coated his black suit in a layer of glistening beads.
In his hands, he held a silenced sniper rifle equipped with a thermal imaging scope.
Through the scope, the interior of Freight Building 12 glowed in shades of neon orange and dark blue. Inside the massive steel structure, twenty armed mercenaries guarded a central, climate-controlled clean room module. Inside the module sat rows of automated centrifuge equipment, synthesizing industrial batches of Phobos-9.
And standing on the catwalk directly above the clean room was Clara Mercer.
Through the thermal lens, her body was a terrifying study in biological precision. While the mercenaries around her shifted their weight, checked their watches, and breathed in irregular rhythms, Clara stood utterly motionless. Her heart rate, monitored by the thermal telemetry software in Julian's rifle, was a flat, hypnotic forty-two beats per minute.
She was completely cold.
"She isn't human anymore," Julian whispered to himself.
Suddenly, through the optical crosshairs of his scope, Clara turned her head.
She didn't look at the warehouse floor. She didn't look at her guards.
She looked straight through the reinforced glass window of the warehouse wall, through two hundred yards of pitch-black fog, directly into the lens of Julian’s sniper scope.
She raised her right hand, touched two fingers to her temple in a mocking salute, and dropped out of sight.
"Trap!" Julian yelled into his ear comms.
Before he could pull his finger from the trigger, a high-explosive thermite charge mounted directly beneath the shipping container he was standing on detonated with a blinding, roar of orange fire.
The steel roof beneath Julian’s feet buckled upward. The shockwave threw him thirty feet through the air. He crashed hard onto a pile of discarded wooden pallets below, his rifle spinning out of his hands into the dark water of the bay.
Julian gasped, blood pouring from a gash on his forehead as he tumbled into the shadows of a container row, his vision swimming in violent red streaks.
He forced his body up, pulling his 9mm pistol from his shoulder holster with stiff, bruised fingers.
Heavy tactical boots crunched against the wet gravel outside the container row.
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Clara Mercer walked out of the fog. She carried no heavy rifle, no armor—only two sleek, nickel-plated combat knives held in a reverse grip. Her violet eyes were wide, luminous, and completely insane.
"Hello, Brother," Clara whispered, her voice like velvet stretched over razor wire. "Let's see whose chemistry was better."
