Chapter 1041
There was only the deafening roar of blood in her ears.
The perfect, sun-drenched future she had clung to—triggered by Liam’s chilling text message—was nothing but a momentary, desperate delusion fabricated by her failing mind. The hallucination snapped back into brutal reality.
She wasn’t on a yacht. It wasn’t three days later.
It was dawn. Right now.
She was standing on the rocky beach behind the Vance Manor, the sun just bleeding over the horizon, illuminating the smoking ruins of the vault they had barely escaped.
A violent wave of nausea hit her. Skye swayed, her knees buckling as the world tilted on its axis.
Liam was there instantly, his good arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her against his chest before she could hit the ground.
“Skye?” His voice sounded distorted, as if he were shouting underwater. “What’s wrong?”
“I…” Skye blinked, but her vision was swimming with black spots. The ringing in her ears became a high-pitched shriek. “My head. It’s spinning.”
A sudden, searing heat bloomed against her right thigh.
It was the pocket of her tactical pants. During the final struggle in the vault, a strange, uncut ruby had fallen from a pouch on Bastian’s belt. In the chaos, she had snatched it—assuming it was a key or a data drive—and had kept it pressed against her body ever since, completely unaware that the stone itself was the weapon.
Now it felt like a branding iron.
She gasped, clawing at her pocket. “It burns.”
Julian, leaning heavily on Ethan a few feet away, snapped his head toward her. His pale eyes widened as he saw the faint reddish vapor seeping through the fabric of her pants.
“The stone,” Julian rasped, his voice tight with sudden terror. “Get it away from her! That’s not a jewel. It’s raw, weaponized hallucinogenic ore. I’ve read about it in the Administrator’s files. Bastian used it to keep his subjects compliant. It vaporizes when exposed to prolonged body heat!”
Liam didn’t hesitate. He ripped open the cargo pocket, grabbed the hot stone, and hurled it into the ocean. It hit the water with a sharp hiss.
But it was too late.
The red vapor had already coated her skin, seeping into her pores, flooding her bloodstream.
Skye’s lungs seized. She couldn’t draw oxygen. The faces of Liam, Alistair, and Julian blurred into a smear of colors.
Her eyes rolled back. The last thing she felt was the desperate, crushing grip of Liam’s hand on her arm.
Then, total darkness.
“Skye!” Liam’s scream tore through the morning air, raw and broken. He dropped to his knees, taking her dead weight with him. “Call an ambulance! Now!”
Alistair sprinted toward them, kicking debris out of the way. “No time for an ambulance! They’ll never get down this cliff path. My car is parked on the lower access road—an old smuggler’s route I scoped out for our exfiltration. Move!”