Chapter 73 - The Face in the Granite
Commander Heinrich Voss did not look like a man who had spent the last month rotting in a federal supermax facility in Colorado. He wore a clean, dark tactical turtleneck, his silver hair neatly combed, and his hands resting casually on the edge of a steel control console as if he were welcoming old friends to a dinner party.
Beside him, two heavily armed mercenaries stood at parade rest, their carbines pointed downward at the floor, showing no immediate sign of hostility.
Avery stopped ten paces from the console, her Sig Sauer locked dead on Voss’s chest, her eyes wide with a cold, incredulous fury.
“Heinrich,” Avery said, her voice cutting through the hum of the cooling fans like a razor blade. “The U.S. Marshals transferred you to a maximum-security prison in Florence three weeks ago. Unless you grew wings and learned how to phase through six feet of reinforced concrete, you shouldn't be standing in a Canadian bunker.”
Voss smiled thinly, spreading his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. His eyes held no panic, only a strange, tired amusement. “Prisons are for people who lack imagination, Captain. Or for people whose utility to the state has expired. When you operate at the level Marcus Vance and I used to play at, concrete cells are merely temporary inconveniences managed by men with very flexible moral compasses.”
“You broke out?” Ethan growled, taking a half-step forward, his carbine leveled at the mercenary standing to Voss’s right.
“I didn't break out, Mr. Reynolds,” Voss corrected smoothly, tapping the glass screen of the mainframe beside him. “I was invited to leave. Because Washington realized something very important the moment you scrubbed the Prometheus cores: they didn't kill Aegis. They just cut off its head. And an organization without a head is much harder to control than one with a manager.”
Avery didn't lower her weapon. Her finger rested lightly against the trigger guard, her mind calculating windage, distance, and reflex times within the confined space of the bunker. “You sent the beacon to Lake Tahoe. You wanted us out here.”
“I wanted you out here, Avery,” Voss corrected, his voice turning suddenly serious. He walked around the edge of the steel console, stopping just five feet away from the muzzle of her pistol. He didn't flinch. He looked straight into her eyes with a haunting, profound exhaustion. “Because Michael didn't die in the Geneva vault raid. And he certainly didn't die of a heart attack in Nevada.”
The words hit the concrete floor with the force of a physical blow.
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Ethan stiffened beside her, his breath catching in his throat. “That's a lie. We buried him.”
“You buried an empty casket, Ethan, wrapped in lead foil to satisfy the government's need for closure,” Voss said softly, turning his gaze toward the massive bank of quantum servers humming behind him. “Michael Vance built this entire installation forty years ago as an insurance policy against the very government he served. And right now, behind that final bulkhead door, he is waiting for you.”
