Chapter 58 - Fire in the Vault
The control room erupted into a deafening cacophony of gunfire and shouting. The thick glass panels of the observation hub shattered into a million glittering shards, raining down across the computer consoles like crystal hail.
General Vance ducked behind the heavy steel-reinforced base of the central console, scrambling for a concealed emergency keypad on the underside of the desk.
“He’s locking the core terminal!” Ethan yelled over the roar of gunfire, desperately typing away as red warning lights flashed across his screen. “If he hits that manual execution key, the countdown timer will drop to zero instantly!”
I vaulted over the shattered remains of the glass partition, closing the distance to the central console in three long strides. Before Vance’s finger could press the execution button, I slammed my boot down onto his hand, pinning it against the metal housing.
Vance let out a sharp gasp of pain, looking up at me with unyielding defiance in his eyes. “You can’t stop the future, Avery... the network is already replicating across satellite relays worldwide.”
“I don't need to stop the future, General,” I said coldly, reaching down, grabbing his collar, and forcefully pressing his thumb against the biometric scanner embedded in the master terminal.
BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION ACCEPTED.
“Ethan! Now!” I shouted.
May you like
Ethan slammed his hand onto the master execution key. “Quarantine script deployed! Flushing all secondary nodes... erasing core server data... wiping the synchronization loop!”
On the massive central screen, the glowing countdown timer froze at 37:12, stuttered, and then dissolved into a cascading wave of bright green flushing code. The pulsing red nodes across the 3D globe one by one flickered, went dark, and vanished entirely from the display.
