Chapter 56 - The Grandfather's Safeguard
Eleanor sneered, her hand stabbing down toward the terminal keyboard to force the override. "Poetic garbage! Your grandfather was a sentimental fool, just like you! But he was bound by the laws of the Sovereign charter. Thorne uploaded the primary sequence before your little rescue team arrived. All I need to validate the transfer is five seconds of optical contact with the child's retina!"
She suddenly raised a high-frequency biometric strobe light mounted above the terminal, aiming it directly at Clara.
"Close her eyes!" Mark yelled, lunging forward.
"No, Mark, wait!" I shouted.
I didn't turn Clara away. Instead, I stepped directly into the focal beam of the sovereign terminal, holding my daughter high so her eyes met the optical scanner on the console.
"Sarah, are you insane?!" Mark cried, frozen in horror.
Eleanor let out a triumphant, cackling laugh as the scanner's green laser swept across Clara’s face. "Yes! Yes! Validate it! Transfer the sovereign charter of the House of Montgomery to the primary regent—Eleanor Montgomery!"
The quantum computer hummed violently. The cooling fans whined to a deafening pitch as millions of lines of encrypted Cold War code cascaded down the wall monitors.
*BIOMETRIC PROFILE DETECTED: CLARA MONTGOMERY.*
*GENETIC MARKER: CONFIRMED 1968 COVENANT SUCCESSOR.*
"It's done!" Eleanor cried out, her eyes shining with manic ecstasy. "The wealth of forty nations! The immunity of kings! It belongs to me!"
Then, a mechanical click echoed inside the terminal housing.
A deep, synthesized voice, recorded over fifty years ago, boomed through the vault’s vintage intercom system:
*"BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION ACCEPTED. INITIATING PROTOCOL: 'SOLOMON'S TEST'."*
Eleanor froze, the smile dying on her lips. "What? What is Solomon's Test?!"
The voice continued, cold, precise, and indisputably belonging to my late grandfather, Charles Montgomery:
*"IF THIS CONSOLE IS ACCESSED UNDER DURESS, THE SYSTEM SHALL QUERY THE BIOLOGICAL SUCCESSOR'S NEURAL RESPONSIVENESS TO MATERNAL HEART-RATE PROXIMITY. SHOULD THE INFANT'S STRESS BIOMARKERS BE PROVOKED BY THE REGENT CLAIMANT... ALL ASSETS, TITLES, AND COVENANTS HELD BY ELEANOR MONTGOMERY ARE DEEMED FORFEIT IMMEDIATELY."*
A crimson banner flashed across every screen in the facility:
*HOSTILE SEIZURE DETECTED.*
*AUTHORITY TRANSFERRED IN FULL AND PERPETUITY TO: SARAH MONTGOMERY.*
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*ELEANOR MONTGOMERY: DESIGNATED FRAUDULENT CLAIMANT. ALL DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY REVOKED.*
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