“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 98 / 100

Chapter 98 - The Severed Crown

The bunker beneath the manor was not an archaic concrete shelter.

It was a gleaming, sterile cathedral of treason. Banks of supercomputers hummed in chilled nitrogen chambers, bathing the circular room in an ominous, pulsing cobalt glow. In the center of the chamber, suspended over a glass floor looking into an abyss of servers, hung the Master Terminal of Operation Ares-Omega.

On the panoramic displays wrapping around the dome, orbital telemetry mapped the trajectories of twenty-four kinetic strike satellites orbiting the globe.

Targeting reticles were blinking red over thirty sovereign nations.

*GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT IN: 01 MINUTE, 45 SECONDS.*

Arthur Carter stood at the primary console, his ancient fingers dancing across the illuminated interface, his face bathed in the cold light of planetary annihilation.

"You are persistent, Elena," he said without turning around. "Just like your mother. She had that same stubborn, foolish defiance. She thought she could expose this project twenty years ago."

I stopped ten paces behind him, the Damascus blade gripped tightly in my bloodstained hand.

"You killed my mother," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "The car accident on the Virginia turnpike wasn't a mechanical failure."

"She was going to the Department of Justice," Arthur said coldly, turning to face me. He held a small, nickel-plated derringer in his right hand. "She forgot that blood serves the mission, not the other way around. Just as you have forgotten."

"I haven't forgotten anything," I snarled, my muscles coiling like steel springs. "I remember the oath I took. To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

"Words written on parchment by dead men!" Arthur yelled, his calm facade finally shattering into absolute, raving madness. "I am offering you the Earth, Elena! I am offering you the throne of human destiny! All you have to do is kneel and take the terminal!"

"I'd rather burn in hell with the rest of this family," I said.

Arthur raised the derringer.

I lunged.

*BANG.*

A bullet ripped through the meat of my left shoulder, spinning me sideways, but the momentum was already unstoppable. I crashed into the eighty-five-year-old tyrant, driving him against the central terminal console.

The glass screens shattered under our impact. Arthur was shockingly strong for his age, driven by the frantic, manic energy of a dying demigod. He clawed at my eyes, his fingers sinking into my cheeks, his teeth bared in an animalistic snarl.

"You... ungrateful... child!" he spat, his saliva flecking my face.

I trapped his gun arm with my broken left hand, ignoring the blinding agony shooting down my spine. With my right hand, I drove the Damascus blade straight through the master terminal’s primary fiber-optic junction box.

Blue electrical fire erupted with a deafening crack.

The console exploded outward in a wave of superheated plasma. Arthur screamed as the high-voltage discharge surged through his body, his grip tearing away from my throat.

The central displays flickered, strobing erratically as the kinetic targeting telemetry collapsed into gibberish.

*CRITICAL SYSTEM CORRUPTION.*

*TARTARUS PLATFORM: ORBITAL DEVIATION DETECTED.*

*TARGETING LOCK: ABORTED.*

Arthur lay on the shattered glass floor, his uniform charred, his chest heaving with shallow, rattling breaths. The life was draining fast from his ancient eyes, but the madness remained.

"You... you stopped the purge..." he wheezed, coughing up dark blood onto his ribbons. "You saved... the parasites..."

I stood over him, my left arm hanging limp, blood dripping from my fingertips onto his pale forehead.

"I saved the country you spent forty years trying to destroy," I whispered.

Arthur smiled—a hideous, broken grin that exposed his blackened teeth.

"You think... you think Tartarus was the only weapon?" he rasped, his eyes widening in one final, terrifying spasm of spite. "You poor... blind... soldier. Look at... the secondary registry..."