“Still pretending to be a soldier?” my brother laughed as my entire family humiliated me at our backyard barbecue, but seconds later, a V-22 Osprey landed outside, two officers saluted me, and my father finally realized he had no idea who his daughter really was. / Chapter 54 / 100

Chapter 54 - The Scion's Ghost

Level Three was buried eight hundred feet beneath the granite bedrock.

To get there, we had to take the auxiliary maintenance stairs; the elevators had been severed, their cables dangling like severed nerves in the dark vertical shafts. We moved in tactical silence, boot soles rolling from heel to toe along the metal grates, the beams of our weapon lights cutting through the lingering haze of chemical smoke.

At the landing of Sub-level Two, we found our first live obstacle.

Two Aegis-One operators were crouched near an open breaker panel, splicing an auxiliary generator into the door controls. They had thermal goggles lowered and suppressed submachine guns slung across their chests.

Vance didn't hesitate. He took the man on the left with two center-mass shots that thumped softly against the contractor's ceramic chest plate before driving him to the floor. The second man spun, raising his weapon, but I was already inside his guard.

I slapped the barrel of his carbine aside, drove the heel of my boot into his knee until the joint popped with a sickening crunch, and slammed his head against the concrete wall. He slumped, dazed, his helmet rolling across the floor.

I planted my knee on his sternum, pressing the cold muzzle of my sidearm against the soft hollow beneath his jaw.

"Where is Jake?" I asked.

The contractor coughed, blood spattering across his cracked teeth. He gave a jagged, humorless laugh. "Your... your brother? He’s in the cage, Major. Director Carter... didn't have much use for a bookkeeper who panicked under pressure."

"How many men does Arthur have on Level Three?"

"Twenty... twenty-five," the contractor gasped, his eyes darting toward the radio on his shoulder. "They’re in the command rotunda. The Director... he’s already uploaded the Tartarus decryption codes to the global broadcast array. In thirty minutes... the entire banking system... the power distribution grids... everything gets scrubbed. He’s starting over, Major. You can't shoot your way out of a clean slate."

I didn't answer. I drove the butt of my pistol into his temple, knocking him unconscious, then stripped his tactical harness for extra flashbangs and zip-ties.

"Did you hear that?" Vance whispered, catching his breath against the railing. "Jake is alive."

"For now," I said coldly. "Arthur kept Jake alive because Jake knows the account numbers for the shell companies in Zurich and Singapore. David generated the dirty money; Jake washed it; Arthur spent it. Arthur won't kill Jake until the last transaction clears."

We moved through the heavy steel hatch leading to Sector Alpha's detention block. Unlike the rest of the facility, this area was submerged in pitch darkness except for the blue luminescence of an auxiliary terminal at the end of the hall.

Inside the third cell, curled on a cold metal bench beneath a rough wool blanket, was my middle brother.

Jake Carter looked ten years older than the tanned, confident corporate CFO who had sneered at me across our father’s picnic table three months ago. His tailored linen shirt was shredded, stained with vomit and sweat. His expensive Italian loafers were gone, his bare feet bruised and filthy. When my weapon light washed over his face, he screamed, throwing his arms over his head, curling into a fetal ball.

"Don't! David, please! I gave you the routing codes! I gave you everything!"

"Jake," I said, stepping into the cell.

He stopped trembling, slowly parting his fingers. His eyes, bloodshot and sunken into dark hollows, locked onto my uniform, my tactical vest, the cold intensity in my gaze.

"Elena?" His voice was a cracked squeak. "You're... you're dead. David said you burned in the salt flats. He said the military bombed the refinery."

"David is dead, Jake," I said, my voice flat. "I buried him in his own vault."

Jake stared at me, then dropped his face into his hands and began to sob—a ragged, pathetic sound that bounced off the steel walls of the cell. "He was crazy, Elena. David lost his mind. But Dad... oh God, Elena... Dad was worse. When the shooting started at the house, Dad didn't even blink. He shot the federal marshals himself. He walked into my office, put a gun to my head, and told me that if I miscalculated a single decimal point on the transfer protocols, he’d feed me to the dogs."

I reached down, grabbed Jake by the collar of his ruined shirt, and dragged him up until his face was inches from mine.

"Where is the master terminal for the Tartarus uplink, Jake?"

"In... in the Command Rotunda," Jake stammered, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. "He’s got the launch triggers for the submarine's secondary payload. If the bunker gets breached by the military, he’s going to detonate the EMP warheads across the North American continent. He calls it the 'Winter Protocol.' He says once the grid goes dark for six months, the survivors will beg someone like him to take over."

"How do we bypass the rotunda's blast locks?"

Jake swallowed hard, reaching into his pocket with trembling fingers. He pulled out a tiny, silver USB drive coated in dried blood.

"He made me copy the kernel codes," Jake whispered. "He thought I didn't know how to write a backdoor. But I’m the one who designed the financial encryption, Elena! I built an emergency failsafe into the root directory. If you plug this into the primary mainframe, it severs the uplink to the *Leviathan*."

I took the drive from his hand, inspecting it under my weapon light.

"Why didn't you use it?" I asked.

Jake looked at me, tears streaming through the grime on his cheeks. "Because I'm a coward, Elena. You always knew it. David always knew it. Dad definitely knew it. I wanted to survive. That's all I ever wanted."

I let go of his collar. He slumped back onto the bench, rubbing his chest where my grip had bruised him.

"Stay in this cell," I said, turning toward the doorway. "Lock the door from the inside using the manual latch. If anyone other than Vance or me comes through that corridor, don't scream. Just pray."

"Elena," Jake called out, his voice small and desperate. "He’s got two dozen men in there. He’s been waiting for you. He wants you to come through that door. He told his contractors... he told them not to shoot to kill. He wants to talk to you."