My family laughed while my sister humiliated my two children with cat food on Christmas Day, never imagining I’d stop funding her lifestyle—but when I discovered her boyfriend inside my repair shop with a crowbar, his confession exposed just how far my own sister had gone… / Chapter 103 / 105

Chapter 103 - The Breach of the Upper Gates

Jared’s first shot took out the generator’s fuel line. A burst of blue flame flared against the snow, and the chattering engine choked, died, and plunged the clearing into darkness.

The recovery team reacted instantly. Muzzle flashes lit up the perimeter of the shack as return fire tore through the deadfall where Marcus and Jared were positioned. Pine needles and splinters rained down on their hoods.

"Moving left!" Marcus shouted, rolling out of the ditch and firing three suppression bursts that forced the technicians behind their armored utility truck.

Jared didn't stay on the ridge. He charged down the slope, using the momentum of the snowdrift, sliding directly into the shadow of the lattice tower.

One of the armed guards stepped around the corner of the shack, weapon raised, but Jared hit him with the full weight of his shoulder, slamming the man against the steel framework. The guard's weapon flew into the snow. Jared drove an iron fist into the man's throat, following with a sweeping kick that dropped him flat onto the frozen shale.

"The dish is still tracking!" Marcus yelled over the comms. "They have an internal battery backup!"

Inside the shack, the master terminal was glowing with green orbital telemetry lines. An automated computer voice echoed through a small speaker: *TRAJECTORY LOCKED. PERIGEE ACHIEVED. COMMENCING DE-ORBIT BURN IN FIVE MINUTES.*

Jared kicked the shack door off its rusted hinges.

The lead flight technician, a tall man with wire-rimmed glasses beneath a fur-lined hood, turned around with a semi-automatic pistol drawn. "You’re too late, Vancell! The thrusters have already committed! Even if you smash this terminal, the orbital momentum will bring the vessel down on your shop within the hour!"

Jared stepped forward, ignoring the pistol leveled at his chest. His eyes were cold, hollowed out by days of sleeplessness, fueled only by the image of his children locked in the bedrock below.

"Then I’m not smashing the terminal," Jared said.

Before the technician could squeeze the trigger, Jared lunged, grabbing the man’s wrist and driving it upward. A shot punched through the tin roof. Jared twisted the arm, hearing the satisfying snap of the radius bone, and drove the technician’s face down onto the edge of the metal desk.

Jared leaned over the glowing keyboard. He didn't know high-level computer science, but he knew mechanical coordinates. He recognized the latitude and longitude figures flashing on the screen.

It was the repair shop.

His grandfather’s shop.

The place where he had spent ten years rebuilding car engines to buy shoes for Ellie and braces for Noah. The place where Melissa had sneered at his grease-stained hands while demanding another five-hundred-dollar check to pay for her luxury sports coupe.

Jared grabbed the heavy industrial wire-cutters from his belt. He didn't cut the main power. He re-routed the target vector by four degrees west—away from the repair shop, away from the valley, straight into the sheer, uninhabited granite wall of Mount Desolation, three miles north of the timberline.

"No!" the technician screamed from the floor, clutching his broken arm. "The capsule will be destroyed on impact! The isotope will scatter across the mountain!"