Chapter 68 - The Digital Trojan
Croft didn't hesitate. He grabbed my arm, his grip bruising through my sleeve, and dragged me toward the primary interface terminal set into the black marble console.
"If this is a trick, Claire," he hissed, his aristocratic composure entirely shattered, "I will have your friend Ethan thrown into the processing turbine while you watch."
"Verify the loop, Julian," I said, staring directly into the retina scanner mounted beside the terminal. "Or explain to your masters why their names are on tomorrow's front pages."
The terminal chirped. A crimson beam of light mapped my eye.
*BIOMETRIC CONFIRMED: VANCE, CLAIRE.*
*CLEARANCE LEVEL: ALPHA SOVEREIGN (LEGACY).*
Croft’s breath caught in his throat. The holographic directors erupted into a chaotic storm of distorted voices. "She has Victoria's root access! Julian, secure the terminal immediately!"
What Croft didn't know—what no one in this room understood—was that there was no seventy-two-hour dead-man loop.
When I took Victoria's signet drive from the vault in Maine, Ethan and I hadn't just copied her files; we had injected an aggressive, weaponized worm engineered by our black-hat contacts in Berlin. It had been programmed for one specific purpose: to seek out any Archon-linked root server and invert the cooling system's pressure valves while dumping the encrypted storage into the public domain.
The moment my retina was verified, the virus executed.
The screens in the rotunda flickered violently. A deafening klaxon began to pulse through the chamber, bathing the black marble in strobing red emergency light.
*WARNING: PRIMARY COOLANT FAILURE IN SECTOR 4.*
*FIREWALL BREACH IN PROGRESS. EXTERNAL EXTRUSION DETECTED.*
"What have you done?!" Croft screamed, drawing a compact ceramic pistol from his coat.
Before he could level the barrel at my forehead, Ethan moved.
He had already used the carbon pick to sever his ties minutes earlier during the chaos. With the terrifying speed of an elite operative, Ethan launched himself across the console, his forearm catching Croft beneath the chin with a sickening crunch. The ceramic pistol spun across the slick floor, firing a wild round into the acoustic ceiling tiles.
"Claire, move!" Ethan shouted, catching Croft’s fallen weapon from the deck and firing three double-taps into the nearest security guards before they could raise their submachine guns.
The holographic feeds of the ten directors glitched and tore into digital static as the platform’s mainframe began to fry itself from the inside out.
"Terminal lock engaged!" I shouted over the blaring siren, smashing the glass casing on the manual emergency override and driving the platform’s ballast purge lever forward. "The whole facility is dumping its stability tanks!"
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The floor beneath us groaned—a deep, metallic scream that vibrated straight through our boots as thousands of tons of North Atlantic seawater rushed into the lower compartments.
***
