Chapter 8 - The Venom in the Syringe
From a hidden alcove in the dark corner of the room, two heavy steel security doors slide open with a hydraulic hiss.
Out step two more men—not ordinary security guards, but heavy-set, broad-shouldered men dressed in white medical uniforms, their faces hidden behind dark rubber respirator masks. In their hands, they hold heavy pneumatic tranquilizer rifles used for controlling dangerous animals in research facilities.
"Kill him," Vance commands casually, turning his back on Jax as he steps toward Clara’s side with the syringe raised. "Dispose of the body in the mountain furnace. Bring the boy and the infant upstairs. Their neural tissue will yield even higher concentrations of the protein."
Before the two masked guards can raise their pneumatic rifles, Jax acts with lethal, instinctive speed.
He doesn't lunge at the guards; he hurls the heavy steel breaker bar through the air with all his strength. The twenty-inch bar spins violently through the light, striking the primary overhead surgical lamp with catastrophic force.
CRASH-FLASH.
The massive glass lens explodes into a shower of white-hot shards, destroying the high-voltage electrical transformer within. Sparks spray across the room like fireworks, instantly plunging the surgical suite into near-total darkness, illuminated only by the faint, eerie blue glow of the backup heart monitors and the moonlight streaming through the high transom windows.
In the sudden darkness, Jax becomes a phantom born of rage and survival.
He closes the distance to the first masked guard before the man can adjust his vision to the shadows. Jax grabs the barrel of the pneumatic rifle, yanking it sideways with enough force to dislocate the guard’s shoulder. Jax drives his forearm straight into the man's throat, crushing his windpipe, and spins him around to use his heavy body as a human shield just as the second guard fires a high-velocity tranquilizer dart into the dark.
The heavy dart thuds deep into the first guard’s body armor with a metallic THWACK.
Jax doesn't give the second guard a chance to reload. He shoves the gasping guard aside, vaulting over the edge of a stainless steel supply cart, and drives his heavy combat boot straight into the second guard’s chest.
The impact carries both men backward across the room, smashing through a glass instrument cabinet before slamming into the brick wall behind it. The guard drops to his knees, senseless, as Jax delivers a final, devastating hammer-fist to the back of his neck, neutralizing him completely.
Jax spins around in the dark, his chest heaving, his breathing heavy as he looks toward the surgical table.
Dr. Vance is gone from Clara’s side.
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Through the dim blue light of the heart monitor, Jax catches a glimpse of movement near the rear exit door of the surgical suite—a shadow slipping through a narrow service portal leading up toward the estate’s roof observatory.
And in that shadow’s hand, gleaming under the moonlight, is the amber syringe, held like a dagger aimed at the world.
