Chapter 113 - The Shattered Covenant of Zurich
I rose slowly from behind the desk, holding my hands high where Julian could see them. My palms were coated in gray plaster dust, my clothes torn, my knuckles bruised and bloody. Behind me, crouched in the dark knee-hole of the desk, Maya sat trembling, clutching the small cracked terminal against her chest.
"Let her walk out," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline roaring in my veins. "You have what you want, Julian. The vault is breached. You can claim the physical files. Just let Clara take Maya to the street."
Julian smiled, taking three slow, deliberate steps toward me until the barrel of his silver pistol was less than four feet from my chest.
"Do you really take me for such an amateur, Katherine?" he said, his voice dripping with condescension. "Maya is the primary node now. The console just registered her as the sole living signatory. If she leaves this vault alive, I spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for the day she turns eighteen and files an administrative injunction with the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne."
"She’s nine years old!" I shouted, the fury finally breaking through my restraint. "She's your niece! She shares your blood, you monster!"
"Blood is a medium of exchange, Katherine," Julian said cold-bloodedly. "Father understood that, even if he lacked the stomach to follow through. He threw her out of his dining room because he knew, deep in his pathetic, sniveling heart, that an outsider's child would always contaminate the balance sheet. He was right about that. The only mistake he made was leaving you alive to nurse your pathetic maternal grudge."
Julian cocked the hammer of the pistol. The metallic *click* sounded like the crack of doom in the enclosed concrete space.
"Step aside, Katherine."
"No."
"I will shoot you through the heart, and then I will shoot her," Julian said, his eyes devoid of any human light. "You have five seconds."
"Five," I whispered.
"Four."
"Three."
From beneath the shattered teak desk, Maya didn't scream, and she didn't cry. Instead, she pressed the primary red abort toggle on the terminal console she had been cradling in her lap.
A piercing, continuous siren began to wail from the ceiling speakers—a mechanical banshee scream that vibrated in our very teeth.
*EMERGENCY FLOODING PROTOCOL ENGAGED.*
*LIMMAT SIPHON GATES: OPEN.*
*TIME TO FULL INUNDATION: 60 SECONDS.*
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Julian’s eyes widened in sudden, incandescent shock. He glanced involuntarily toward the iron sally port at the rear of the chamber, where the sound of churning, subterranean water was already rising into a terrifying roar.
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