Chapter 11
“Don’t do it, Julian!” Sarah shouted, stepping out beside him and lowering her weapon slightly to avoid hitting the server arrays. “If you shoot the server, the power surge will fry her nervous system instantly.”
Mercer laughed softly, stepping away from the control console and walking toward them with a slow, mocking swagger. “Your aunt is smarter than she looks, Mr. Vance. You spent your whole life hiding behind your father’s money, believing you were untouchable. But empires built on stolen children and buried secrets always collapse from the inside.”
Julian kept his rifle trained on Mercer’s chest, his jaw clenched so tightly it ached. “You think you’ve won? My father left a backdoor in this system. He knew about The Architect all along.”
Mercer’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second, a micro-expression of genuine surprise that did not escape Sarah’s sharp eyes.
“Your father was a coward,” Mercer scoffed, recovering his composure quickly. “He took bribes, he signed the hush money checks, and he watched his own daughter vanish into the dark without lifting a finger.”
“He was blackmailed!” Julian roared, stepping forward.
Before Mercer could reply, Sarah moved with blinding speed. Instead of aiming at Mercer, she fired her carbine directly into the overhead sprinkler control box on the wall. A deafening screech echoed through the vault as high-pressure water erupted from the ceiling, instantly short-circuiting the secondary server racks with a shower of brilliant, blinding sparks.
“No!” Mercer screamed, lunging for the master console as alarms began to blare a deafening klaxon throughout the tower.
The blue LED lights flickered violently and died, plunging the vault into darkness, illuminated only by the frantic orange flashing of emergency strobes.
Julian didn’t hesitate. He rushed past Mercer, tackling the guard nearest to the medical chair and sending him crashing into a stack of aluminum equipment cases. The second guard tried to raise his rifle, but Sarah swept his legs out from under him with the butt of her carbine, knocking him cold with a dull thud against the concrete floor.
Julian scrambled to the medical chair where Anna sat, her eyes still closed, her breathing shallow and rapid. The iridescent sphere above her head was sparking violently, discharging tiny arcs of electricity.
“Anna! Can you hear me?” Julian shouted over the blaring alarms, frantically searching the side of the chair for the manual emergency release latch.
The girl’s eyelids fluttered open. Her dark eyes stared up at him, filled with a sudden, overwhelming clarity that had nothing to do with artificial intelligence or corporate data streams.
“You… you came back,” Anna whispered, her voice weak but steady.
“I’m not leaving without you,” Julian said, his fingers finally finding the heavy mechanical release lever at the base of the chair.
Behind them, Mercer staggered to his feet, coughing through the dense ozone smoke, pulling a hidden pistol from his waistband with shaking hands. “You fools… you’re destroying everything!”
Mercer raised the weapon, pointing it squarely at Julian’s back as Julian struggled with the jammed lever.
Sarah raised her carbine, but before she could pull the trigger, a figure lunged out of the smoke from the doorway, slamming into Mercer with unstoppable force.
Elena.
The elegant woman in the ruined beige coat tackled Mercer to the ground, her fingers clawing at his wrist, fighting with a primal, desperate fury that defied her fifty years.
May you like
Mercer cursed, swinging the pistol around, but Julian wrenched the emergency lever down with all his remaining strength.
With a deafening hiss of compressed air, the medical chair unlocked, and the neural-transfer sphere shattered into a thousand glittering pieces of plastic and glass across the floor.
