My Parents Skipped the Funeral of My Husband and Two Children for My Sister’s Birthday, but Six Months Later, One Headline Made Them Panic When They Discovered What I Had Done. / Chapter 98 / 121

Chapter 98 - The Severed Antidote

I drew the encrypted black drive from my tactical vest and slammed it onto the mahogany desk. Julian’s eyes flickered with greedy triumph. For all his calculated brilliance, his imperial detachment crumbled the moment the ultimate instrument of leverage was within his grasp.

"Smart girl," he murmured, pulling the terminal toward himself and inserting the drive into the cryptographic port. "You always knew when the math was against you."

"The antidote first," I demanded, keeping my left hand flat on the silver cylinder.

Julian didn't look up from the cascade of green security codes populating his screen. "Take it. It won't do you any good anyway."

My fingers tightened around the heavy cold steel of the cylinder. "What did you say?"

Julian smiled, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard with practiced ease. "Did you really believe I would let David walk away from this, Claire? Even if you inject him, the cipher is two-stage. The first stage destroys the nervous system. The second stage—the one currently incubating in his bloodstream—is an airborne pathogen designed to turn whatever hospital you take him to into an active biological containment zone. Your husband isn't just a patient, Claire. He's a delivery mechanism."

A cold dread seized my spine.

"And as for this platform," Julian continued, glancing at the chronometer embedded in the console, "the moment this data transfer reaches one hundred percent, the scuttling valves on the sea-floor caissons will open. *Triton Alpha* will sink three hundred meters into the oceanic trench. You, your strike team, and your comatose husband will vanish beneath the waves, officially registered as an industrial accident."

"And you?" I asked, my voice deadly level.

"I have a deep-submergence escape vehicle docked at moonpool three," he said, rising from his chair with an automatic pistol drawn from his coat pocket, leveled directly at my forehead. "The ledger is mine. My death eight years ago was merely the first chapter. Today is the epilogue of the entire family name."

*BEEP.*

The terminal chimed. The screen flashed bright crimson, followed by an aggressive, repeating emergency alarm that echoed through the vast observation deck.

Julian blinked, his arrogant confidence faltering as he read the diagnostic code on the screen:

*ACCESS DENIED. DESTRUCTION PROTOCOL INITIATED. CIPHER CORRUPTED.*

"What is this?" Julian hissed, slamming his fist onto the keyboard. "Where are the keys?!"

"The keys aren't on that drive, Julian," I said, a vicious, feral smile breaking across my face. "That drive doesn't contain the Sovereign Ledger. It contains an auto-executing worm. It just transmitted the coordinates of this platform, your live biometric signature, and eight years of your banking records directly to Interpol, the British Royal Navy, and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service."

Julian’s face drained of all color. "You crazy bitch—"