I was the daughter who paid the $1,845 mortgage every month, yet my parents told me to become independent while my 35-year-old brother lived rent-free—then, less than 24 hours after I left, I discovered they’d already given away my bedroom while still expecting me to fund their house. / Chapter 86 / 90

Chapter 86 - The Sister's Ultimatum

Valerie gestured toward the far side of the chamber with the antenna of the detonator.

Cassidy followed the motion. Suspended in a massive cylinder of reinforced plexiglass was not a mining drill or a reactor core.

It was an enormous, bio-synthetic acoustic transmitter—an organic-synthetic hybrid composed of crystalline neural conduits submerged in nutrient fluid. Inside the tank, floating in suspended animation, was the preserved, withered body of Arthur Vance.

Cassidy choked back a gasp. "Dad...?"

"He didn't die of a heart attack in Oregon," Valerie said coldly. "He faked his demise when the federal grand jury began issuing subpoenas. Eleanor helped him hook himself into the neural dampener. Ridge Road didn't need your eighteen hundred dollars to pay a local bank, Cassidy. Ridge Road needed your blood."

Valerie tapped a terminal beside her. The tank lit up.

"The manifold requires two identical Vance genetic signatures to maintain the harmonic lock," Valerie explained, her voice devoid of empathy. "Arthur was one half. You were the other. Every time you swiped your debit card, the banking interface triggered an acoustic verification sequence that pinged the subdermal micro-relay Arthur implanted in your wrist when you were four years old."

Cassidy reflexively grabbed her left wrist. Beneath the skin, near the radial artery, she had always felt a tiny, hard nodule—something Eleanor had always dismissed as a harmless calcium deposit.

"A biological telemetry beacon," Cassidy realized, the horrifying scope of the conspiracy finally laying bare every detail of her manufactured existence. "If I stayed and paid, the manifold remained locked. Arthur lived. The deep ocean trenches stayed sealed."

"And if you left," Valerie concluded, "the system would begin to starve. That’s why Eleanor panicked. That’s why she threw your clothes on the lawn and gave Donald your room within twenty-four hours. She was trying to force you into coming back. She thought if she insulted you, if she made you desperate enough, you’d crawl back on your knees and resume the payments before the countdown hit zero."

"She didn't know," Cassidy said quietly. "Eleanor didn't know you were waiting on the other side."

"Eleanor was an idiot who thought she was managing a domestic household," Valerie spat. "She had no idea that Arthur had already promised Trench Zero to me. Now, give me your hand, Cassidy. Place your wrist on the terminal pad. If you link your genetic code with mine, we can bypass the destruction. We can take control of the entire sub-oceanic reserve together. We can make the board members of Cross-Continental beg for mercy."