Chapter 10 - The Sovereign Grid
The silence inside the Dulles transit annex was absolute. The only sound was the low, steady hum of the server cooling fans and the faint, tinny audio of Sarah Sterling's voice still echoing from the wall-mounted display.
Harrison Vance slowly slumped forward in his chair, realization dawning upon him that he was nothing more than an expendable pawn in a much larger, catastrophic chess game.
"She... she set us all up," Harrison whispered, his voice trembling. "She was never trying to save the firm. She was using our accounts as a smokescreen to hijack the federal reserve grid."
Marcus didn't blink. His expression remained carved from granite, his mind operating at a hyper-focused level honed by decades on the federal bench. He reached out and tapped the console keyboard.
"Tech," Marcus commanded sharply. "Is that live feed originating from a physical broadcast unit on the courthouse steps?"
The forensics technician frantically typed across his screen, triangulating the signal metadata. "Negative, Your Honor! The video feed is a high-latency proxy transmission. It's being beamed from a mobile satellite uplink vehicle... currently located less than two miles from our exact position."
Marcus turned around, his eyes locking onto Officer Miller and the federal marshal.
"She didn't go downtown," Marcus said, a cold, calculated edge in his voice. "She stayed close, betting we would be too focused on the courthouse to check the perimeter."
Marcus reached down, unholstered his Sig Sauer, and checked the magazine clip with a sharp, metallic click.
"Miller, secure the prisoner and prep the SUV," Marcus ordered, turning toward the exit. "We're going hunting."
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As Marcus strode out of the annex toward the waiting vehicle, his phone buzzed once more with a silent, incoming text message from an unlisted government frequency. It wasn't a threat. It was a GPS coordinate pinned to an abandoned aircraft hangar at the far edge of the airfield—and a single sentence:
Come alone, Judge, or watch the final brick of your career crumble.
