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301 Words
Chapter 11: Deus Ex Machina
The plague doctors knelt.
"The Ultimate Witness awakens," their leader rasped, voice distorting with reverence. "He will see beyond the veil to—"
William raised a hand. Every hazmat helmet exploded simultaneously.
Beneath them—his own face, replicated across generations. The youngest was David, his supposedly dead friend, now smiling with golden tears.
"Welcome to eternal observation," David's voice gurgled through a mechanized larynx. "William Blackwood, seventh of your line, you shall become our—"
Jackie's dagger found his throat. Black fluid splashed William, dissolving the golden filaments. He collapsed, coughing up wires and ichor.
"Jackie..." His voice glitched. "My father... alive..."
Deep in the tunnel, glass cylinders rose from the floor. Six held William's ancestors in amber fluid. The seventh, empty, began filling with gold.
Its door slid open. Waiting.
Chapter 12: The Rift
Jackie's abdominal mark flared. The fetus moved with purpose—a tiny hand pressing from within, perfectly aligned with her sigil.
The tunnel warped. Walls bled black ooze, resolving into Times Square on December 21, 2012. William's father addressed news cameras: "The Mayan prophecy is mere superstition—"
"Temporal anchor point!" Lucas yelled. "The baby's opening rifts!"
David's corpse spasmed. His skull split open, revealing clockwork machinery. The seven clones burst from their tanks, merging into a biomechanical worm that lunged for Jackie's womb.
William moved faster than thought.
He grabbed Jackie's dagger and plunged it into his left eye.
Golden fluid jetted forth, hardening into a key. A bronze door materialized at tunnel's end, its lock a perfect match.
"Get her out!" William's voice digitized as he shoved them toward the door. "Tell our child—"
The worm's scream drowned the rest. Jackie's last sight: William dissolving into the swarm, one golden hand still reaching.
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