Chapter 7 - The Chemical Duel
Clara moved with a speed that defied human anatomy.
She closed the twenty-foot gap between them in less than half a second, her right blade executing a lethal horizontal slash aimed directly at Julian’s carotid artery.
Julian ducked beneath the arc of the steel blade, the wind of its passage whistling past his ear. He raised his pistol, but Clara slammed her left elbow hard into his wrist, shattering the weapon's polymer frame and sending the magazine flying into the darkness.
Julian stepped back, his chest heaving, his left shoulder screaming in agony where the old scar lay.
Clara didn't press the attack immediately. She circled him like a panther, her blades spinning smoothly around her fingers in hypnotic, terrifying circles.
"Finch thought he was a genius," Clara purred, her violet eyes locked on Julian’s face. "He thought he was building soldiers. But he was just an old man playing with matches. He gave you revenge, Julian. He gave me perfection."
"You're a puppet, Clara," Julian spat, wiping blood from his eyes. "Victoria Cross is sitting in a Lincoln three hundred yards away, watching us on a biometric monitor. She’s waiting for one of us to kill the other so she can claim the winner."
Clara laughed—a musical, terrifying sound that echoed off the corrugated steel walls of the shipping containers.
"You think I care about Victoria?" Clara asked, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp hiss. "You think I care about The Sovereign? I don't care about money, power, or justice, Julian. The compound freed me. It stripped away the pathetic human noise—the fear, the love, the guilt, the shame. There is only the sequence. Action and reaction. Power and submission."
She lunged again.
This time, Julian didn't try to dodge. He stepped directly into her strike zone, accepting a terrifying risk.
Clara’s blade bit deep into Julian’s left shoulder, slicing through his suit jacket and driving three inches into his flesh—directly into the purple scar of his Phobos-9 injection site.
Julian screamed in blinding pain, but he did not fall.
He trapped her right arm against his chest with his left elbow, pulling her close. With his free right hand, Julian reached into his inner vest pocket and pulled out a small, glass auto-injector syringe he had prepared hours before in his hotel suite.
It contained no toxin. It contained Amnio-12—a powerful, short-acting neurological reversal agent designed to flood the brain’s opioid receptors with an overwhelming blast of artificial empathy and emotional memory.
Julian jammed the auto-injector directly into Clara’s neck.
May you like
He pressed the plunger.
"Let's see how much you like the noise, sister," Julian hissed into her ear.
