Chapter 36 - The Sister's Confession
"Clara, look at the monitor!" Julianna screamed, thrashing in the seat.
I glanced at the primary console screen. A massive digital clock was counting down: `00:14:22`.
Beneath the countdown, two biological waveform readouts were pulsing in real-time. One was labeled `CATALYST: ACTIVE (JULIANNA VON BELLEROSE)`. The other was labeled `IGNITION: PROXIMITY DETECTED (CLARA VON BELLEROSE)`.
The moment I had stepped onto the dais, my presence had triggered the final synchronization sequence. The high-frequency carrier wave emitted by the servers was reading the transdermal peptide markers in my bloodstream. My very arrival had sealed the execution of the Chimera protocol.
"She baited me," I whispered.
"She always baits you," Julianna sobbed, her arrogance from our past life entirely stripped away, leaving only a terrified, broken woman. "Clara, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I hated you because Father always looked at you like you were special. He ignored my children, he ignored my marriage, he only cared about your audits! But he didn't love you either... he was terrified of you! He knew what Vivienne had made in that lab!"
"Henrik knew?" I asked, my fingers flying over the console's terminal, trying to access the root command line.
"He found out five years ago," Julianna gasped, her breathing growing shallow as the biometric cuffs began drawing more electrical current from her wrists. "That’s why he started hiding money in the Zurich accounts! He wasn't trying to build a slush fund... he was trying to buy private military contractors to assassinate Vivienne before she could activate Chimera!"
The pieces locked into their final, terrifying configuration. Henrik hadn't been the ruthless tyrant trying to disinherit his family; he had been a panicked, desperate man trying to accumulate enough liquidity to fight a silent war against his own wife. And when I exposed his secret accounts, when I handed the evidence to the Swiss authorities, I hadn't served justice.
I had disarmed the only man who was actively trying to prevent Vivienne from executing this final, apocalyptic heist.
"Access denied," the computer system chimed in a cold, synthetic tone.
`ROOT COMMAND REQUIRES COMPLETE NEURAL INTEGRATION.`
`TIME REMAINING: 00:09:41.`
"You cannot stop it from the terminal, Clara," Vivienne’s voice rained down from the observation booth. "The terminal only accepts the combined consciousness of the biological pair. You must sit in the secondary interface chair. Join your sister. Ratify the new world order, and together, you will rule the financial infrastructure of the coming century."
"And if I refuse?" I yelled back, stepping away from the dais.
May you like
Vivienne looked down at me, her face darkening into something ancient and predatory.
"If you refuse, the terminal will initiate a forced extraction," she said simply. "The liquid nitrogen cooling system will purge the chamber. You will freeze to death in this vault within four minutes, and your corpses will provide the necessary static DNA markers anyway. The only difference is whether you survive to witness the empire you built."
