Chapter 35 - Blood in the Control Vault
"Hands on the console where I can see them, Richard," I said, my voice dead and steady, the barrel of my rifle aimed directly at the space between his eyebrows.
The Delta operators fanned out instantly, securing the perimeter of the amphitheater, their weapons locked onto the shadows behind the auxiliary server racks. Abigail stepped forward, stopping slightly behind my left shoulder, her eyes burning into the man who had abandoned her.
Richard didn't raise his hands. Instead, he leaned back in the high-backed leather chair, looking at Abigail with an expression that simulated paternal fondness.
"Look at you, Abby," Richard whispered, his voice trembling with a faux-emotion that turned my stomach. "You survived. I always knew you had my blood in you. The Sterlings were animals, but they were a necessary crucible. Look how strong you've become."
"Shut up," Abigail snarled, her voice shaking with raw, volcanic fury. "Do not speak my name. You sold me to Victor Sterling! You orchestrated my marriage! You let them torture me for three years while you hid under the ground playing God!"
"I gave you to the Sterlings because they controlled the capital markets required to fund the Sovereign Program!" Richard snapped, his composure cracking for a split second, revealing the manic fanaticism beneath. "Do you think the United States is governed by the fools in Congress? By the puppets in the Oval Office? The empire is rotting from the inside out, hollowed by greed and bureaucratic cowardice! For fifty years, private conglomerates like Sterling Holdings have run this country from behind closed doors!"
"And your solution was to become one of them?" I stepped forward, the sights of my weapon never wavering from his forehead. "You took their money, faked your death, broke your family, and now you sit here threatening to incinerate the planet with a strategic override?"
"Not incinerate, Eleanor. Reset," Richard said calmly, his fingers tracing the glowing red master execution key locked into the console. "In three minutes, the automated fail-safe will broadcast a global strike authorization to our missile wings. But the warheads aren't targeted at Moscow or Beijing. Their targeting telemetry has been redirected to thirty-four private offshore servers, corporate data vaults, and private banking enclaves across the globe. I am going to obliterate the financial backbone of the shadow government. In one hour, the debts of the world will be zeroed out. The oligarchs will be turned to ash. And the military—our military—will take direct command of the reconstruction."
"You're insane," Vance spat, stepping up with his weapon raised. "You're talking about killing millions of civilians! You'll collapse the global infrastructure into total anarchy!"
"Order cannot be restored without the cleansing fire of catastrophe, Major!" Richard roared, slamming his fist onto the console. "Eleanor knows this! She saw the horrors we witnessed in Iraq! She saw the contractors getting rich while our men bled in the sand! Who do you think paid for the IED that tore through my convoy twelve years ago? It was Sterling's logistics firm, laundering money for insurgents to keep the defense contracts flowing! I didn't die that day—I woke up!"
"And you became the monster that planted the bomb," I said, closing the distance between us, my combat boots clicking rhythmically against the raised metal flooring. "You let Victor beat your daughter. You let his family starve her in an iron room. You watched it on your surveillance monitors, didn't you?"
Richard met my eyes, and for the first time, I saw no hesitation in him. No remorse.
"A general does not weep for a single soldier when the fate of an empire is at stake," he whispered. "Not even when that soldier is his own flesh and blood."
Abigail didn't scream. She didn't cry.
May you like
She raised her sidearm and pulled the trigger.
***
