Chapter 68 - The Council's Will
"How much did they pay you, Miller?" Emma asked quietly, not moving an inch, her hand hovering above her holster beneath her coat.
"Money?" Miller laughed, a harsh, humorless sound. "Evelyn doesn't pay in cash, Emma. She pays in survival. Francis thought he was a genius, hiding out here on an abandoned radar platform for seven years, waiting for his little test-tube granddaughter to reach maturity so he could execute the Sovereign Override. But the world doesn't belong to old men with family crests anymore. It belongs to the Directorate."
Behind the glass of the medical bay, the heart monitors attached to Francis Laurent began to spike in alarm. The old man was pounding his frail fist against the reinforced glass, his eyes wide with helpless terror, fighting against the restraints of his life-support bed.
"The girl scans her palm," Miller ordered, aiming the carbine directly at Emma’s spine. "The Sovereign Override transfers the eighty-billion-euro trust to the Directorate's holding account in Panama. After that, you two get to take a very long swim in the North Sea."
"Mom..." Lily whispered, trembling beside the server rack.
"Stay down, Lily," Emma commanded, her voice dropping into an icy, razor-sharp calm.
"I won't tell you again, Emma," Miller snapped, stepping forward, his boots crunching on the metal floor. "Bring the girl to the terminal!"
"You forgot one thing, Miller," Emma whispered.
"What's that?"
"My father didn't just teach me how to manage balance sheets."
In a blur of motion, Emma dropped low, pivoting on her left heel. As Miller pulled the trigger, the burst of 5.56mm rounds chewed into the server rack behind her, showering the corridor with sparks.
Emma swept her foot across Miller’s damaged knee with vicious force. The old engineer howled in agony as the joint collapsed with a sickening pop. Before he could redirect the muzzle of his rifle, Emma was up, driving the heel of her hand into his windpipe, followed by two point-blank rounds from her suppressed pistol into his center mass.
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Miller collapsed onto the steel grate, his weapon clattering into the darkness below.
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