Chapter 13
The red warning lights flashing across the central command deck pulsed with an urgent, deafening rhythm. The holographic displays began to warp and distort as the parasitic worm ate through the station's core encryption layers.
"If the transfer completes," the man with the scarred eyebrow warned, drawing a small, matte-black pistol from his overcoat and resting it casually against the edge of the console, "the station's life-support systems will automatically de-rate to emergency reserves. We'll have twenty minutes of oxygen left before the artificial atmosphere collapses."
Julian stepped between the scarred man and the console, his posture rigid and threatening. "Put the gun away. Shooting her won't speed up the code."
"It ensures compliance," the man replied coldly, keeping the weapon leveled near Jennifer’s chair. "If Ms. Hayes cannot isolate the worm, we execute the emergency purge. We save the core drive, and the rest of the station burns."
Jennifer did not look up from the keyboard. Her fingers danced across the glowing keys, her breath coming in steady, controlled rhythms. She remembered the bill on the mahogany table at the Grand Meridian Ballroom—the four hundred and fifty-five billion dollars that had started this entire nightmare. She realized then that the money was never the real problem. The money was just a symbol of humanity’s oldest flaw: the belief that the future could be bought, hoarded, and locked away behind closed doors.
"You can't purge the core," Jennifer said softly, her voice cutting cleanly through the alarms.
"Why not?" the scarred man demanded.
"Because the core isn't running on money anymore," Jennifer said, hitting the enter key with a definitive, echoing snap. "It's running on the truth."
She executed a master command that routed every single financial transaction, hidden ledger, and classified resource allocation directly to every public news network, smartphone, and municipal screen across Earth and orbit simultaneously. The red warning lights on the command deck instantly shifted from angry crimson to a brilliant, serene azure blue.
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The holographic displays stopped flickering. A single, clean sentence appeared across every screen in the room and across the entire planet: DEBT PAID IN FULL. SYSTEM RESET COMPLETE.
The matte-black pistol slipped from the scarred man’s hand, clattering harmlessly against the metal floor.
