Chapter 12 - The Final Countdown
The detonator clicked with a sharp, mechanical snap, but nothing exploded.
Vane frowned, looking down at the remote in his hand. He pressed the button a second time, then a third. The tiny status light on the device remained stubbornly dark, devoid of any transmission signal.
"Looking for a signal?" a calm voice asked from the darkness directly behind Vane.
Vane spun around in shock. David stood casually on the catwalk just three feet away, his amber eyes glowing softly in the dim emergency light. He held a small, charred circuit board in his right hand—the exact internal radio transmitter that Vane had been using to control the detonator.
"How did you—" Vane started, his composed veneer cracking for the first time as he reached into his suit jacket for a concealed sidearm.
Before Vane’s fingers could wrap around the grip of his weapon, David flicked his wrist. A blinding flash of amber light arced through the air, striking the metal railing directly beside Vane’s hand with a deafening crack of high-voltage electricity.
Vane screamed, dropping his weapon as the intense heat scorched his glove, and stumbled backward against the railing. His legs gave out, and he slid down to the grating, staring up at David with wide, unmasked terror.
"The network doesn't run on radio waves anymore, Mr. Vane," David said quietly, stepping closer until he towered over the corporate director. "It runs on us."
Arthur crossed the catwalk in long strides, reaching Vane and hauling the director up by the lapels of his charcoal suit. "Where are the physical decryption keys for the satellite uplink, Vane? Give them to me now, or I let the boy finish what he started."
Vane gasped for air, his eyes darting frantically between Arthur’s hardened expression and David’s glowing eyes. "You... you can't stop the purge. The secondary charges are wired directly to the municipal power grid. Even if I give you the keys, the countdown won't stop without a master biometric clearance from the Department of Defense!"
"Then give me the clearance code," Elena demanded, stepping forward with a look of absolute, lethal determination that silenced the room. She looked down at Vane with utter contempt. "You wanted a clean slate? You're looking at it."
Vane swallowed hard, his professional arrogance entirely stripped away, leaving only the primal fear of survival. He stammered out a twelve-digit alphanumeric sequence, his voice shaking as the reactor's high-pitched whine rose to a deafening, skull-rattling crescendo.
Arthur instantly repeated the code into his comms-rigged collar, hoping against hope that the military satellite was still listening from orbit.
"Command auth-zero-seven-niner-delta," Arthur shouted into the static. "Execute emergency system override on Project Omega!"
For three agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The warning lights pulsed red, and the reactor core began to vibrate so violently that the catwalk beneath their feet groaned in protest.
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Then, the flashing red codes on the central console abruptly shifted to a steady, glowing emerald green.
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