Chapter 108 - The Architect's Throne
The rotunda was an amphitheater of black obsidian and glass. In the center, suspended over a three-hundred-foot vertical shaft that dropped directly into the glacial rift below, sat a massive semicircular command deck.
Sitting in a high-backed chair of brushed steel was an old woman.
She wore an immaculate, tailored black suit, her white hair pinned back with severe precision. Her face was a map of sharp, unforgiving lines, but her posture was straight as an iron rod. She did not have an oxygen tank. She did not have medical monitors. At nearly ninety years old, Victoria Sterling sat like a monarch awaiting tribute.
Flanking her were six private security operators in full Arctic tactical gear, suppressed carbines aimed directly at our chests.
"Drop your weapons, Emily," Victoria said, her voice smooth and devoid of age. "Or Sergeant Kroll will ventilate Clara’s lungs before you can clear leather."
I didn't drop the rifle, but I didn't raise it. Clara was shielded behind Vance, who had his thumb on a thermite grenade pinned to his vest.
"Victoria," Eleanor wheezed from the floor behind us, crawling forward like an obedient dog. "Victoria, please... I brought her. I brought them both back to you. Spare me. Let me go back to Boston..."
Victoria didn't even glance down. "You were always a vulgar, weak-willed little shopkeeper's daughter, Eleanor. Arthur was a fool to marry you, and an even bigger fool to fail at breaking our Emily."
Victoria turned her pale blue eyes upon me. Looking into them was like looking into a mirror that showed only the bones beneath my skin.
"Look at you," Victoria said, a terrifying smile touching the corners of her thin lips. "The bruised little girl from the Connecticut kitchen. Look what you did to my empire. You burned my clearing houses. You killed Arthur. You dismantled seventy years of corporate infiltration in less than a month."
"I didn't do it to impress you," I said coldly. "I did it to erase you."
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"Erase me?" Victoria laughed, a low, aristocratic sound that turned my stomach. "You fool. You think you're rebelling? You think taking Clara and running through the snow is rebellion? Emily, darling... this was the final exam."
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