Chapter 97 - Blood on the Obsidian Throne
The central corridor leading to the Core Study smelled of ozone, copper, and dying emergency power.
We found Victoria slumped against the mainframe bank outside the study’s double oak doors—real oak, imported and sealed within a subterranean titanium shell, looking impossibly out of place beneath the ocean floor. She had tied a field tourniquet around her shoulder, her face pale as parchment, but she held a tactical shotgun across her lap with unyielding resolve.
"You took your time," she whispered, offering a faint, bloody smirk as I helped her to her feet.
"Traffic was rough," I muttered, handing her a fresh magazine for her sidearm. "Can you walk?"
"I can shoot," she said simply.
I stepped up to the massive double doors of Arthur's Core Study. Just like the house in Virginia, a heavy iron knocker in the shape of an owl’s head hung in the center. I grabbed the knocker, lifted it, and struck the strike-plate three times: two short, one long.
A series of heavy mechanical tumblers clicked inside the wood. The doors swung slowly inward.
Inside, the room was bathed in the crimson glow of holographic tactical maps.
Standing behind a massive mahogany desk identical to the one in Vance Ridge was Harrison Croft. He had discarded his suit jacket, his crisp white shirt rolled up to his forearms, revealing forearms covered in intricate, blackened syndicate brandings. He was calmly entering launch coordinates into a brass-trimmed console.
Beside him, plugged directly into the main data-core via spinal cables, stood Augustus Vance. The cybernetic giant turned his glowing optical sensors toward us, a terrible, mechanized hum vibrating from his chest.
"Julian," Croft said without looking up from the monitor. "You really do have your grandfather's stubborn habit of surviving things meant to eradicate you. But you are four minutes too late."
On the holographic display floating between them, a three-dimensional rendering of Vance Ridge blinked in violent red. An orbital strike satellite was locking coordinates on the mountain where I had spent my childhood summers.
"Arthur left one final command," Croft sneered, turning his eyes toward me with triumphant venom. "A consensus protocol. The system requires two direct bloodline signatures to authorize the strike: Augustus Vance... and Richard Vance."
Before I could raise my weapon, Augustus moved.
His massive arm shot across the room with mechanical velocity, his iron fingers clamping around my father's throat, lifting Richard off the ground like a ragdoll and slamming him down onto the glass biometric scanner on the desk.
May you like
"No!" I roared, lunging forward.
***
