Chapter 58
In the subterranean safehouse, Sarah slammed her hand onto the enter key.
She didn't hack the blast doors or the security cameras. She hacked the mountain’s localized fire-suppression system.
A deafening alarm shrieked through the communication hub. The massive, industrial vents in the ceiling suddenly violently reversed their flow, sucking the oxygen out of the room and deploying a thick, blinding cloud of highly pressurized, chemical foam designed to smother electrical fires.
The room instantly plunged into absolute, chaotic blindness.
"Open fire!" the Praetorian guards roared, but they were shooting blindly into the thick, white foam.
Cole didn't need to see. He had memorized the spatial geometry of the room in the seconds before the purge.
He surged forward, sliding across the slick floor, dodging the erratic gunfire. He closed the distance to the central console where the Architect was frantically trying to access the uplink terminal.
Cole didn't shoot. He grabbed the Architect by the collar of his expensive suit, hauling him backward, and drove a brutal, devastating knee into the man's ribs.
The Architect gasped in agony, dropping his silver cane.
"You can't stop it!" the Architect choked out, blood on his lips. "The network is automated! It will purge the cities!"
Cole slammed the man's head brutally against the steel console, rendering him instantly unconscious.
"Donovan! The terminal!" Cole roared over the alarms.
Donovan burst through the foam, providing heavy suppressive fire toward the catwalks to keep the guards pinned down.
Cole pulled the glowing vial of Nora's genetic data from his vest. He slammed the glass cylinder into the specialized biometric reader on the console.
The screens flashed brilliantly green. BIOMETRIC OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. AWAITING COMMAND.
"Sarah! I'm in!" Cole yelled.
"Injecting the corrupt code now!" Sarah replied frantically, the sound of her rapid typing echoing over the comms. "It’s uploading! Ten seconds to system failure!"
Bullets sparked against the metal casing of the console as the Praetorian guards began to blindly advance down the stairs.
"Hold them!" Cole shouted, drawing his sidearm and firing into the white fog, dropping an advancing guard.
Five seconds.
The screens flickered wildly, the green text glitching into aggressive, jagged red lines.
Three seconds.
"Upload complete!" Sarah screamed. "The network is cascading! The satellites are bricking!"
A massive, electrical whine echoed through the servers as millions of lines of destructive code tore through the Vanguard’s digital empire, permanently disabling the God's Eye grid without triggering the failsafe.
"It's done! We have to move!" Cole ordered.
He didn't grab the unconscious Architect. He grabbed Donovan’s shoulder, pulling her toward the heavy blast doors just as a heavy caliber round struck her in the thigh.
Donovan cried out, collapsing to the floor.
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"I've got you!" Cole roared, hauling the massive Sergeant up, throwing her over his broad shoulder.
He fired wildly behind him, forcing his way out of the communication hub and into the dark corridors of the mountain, leaving the burning, ruined heart of the new world behind him.
