Arthur banged his cane against the iron floor, the sound ringing like a death knell.
“The vault requires the simultaneous living blood of a Moretti and a Ward,” Arthur snarled, his voice turning shrill with rage.
“I brought Vincent here to bleed him over the sensor.
But having you walk in freely?
Fate has a delicious sense of irony.”
On the catwalks above, the six guards cocked their assault rifles in unison.
“You don’t understand, Arthur,” Vincent said calmly, lowering his weapon slightly, not out of surrender, but out of total certainty.
“My father didn’t just maintain the lock.
He reprogrammed the fail-safe.”
Arthur froze.
“What did he do?”
“He knew that if you ever came back, you would come with an army,” Vincent said.
“He knew that force could compel blood.
So he tied the biometric sensor to a secondary condition.”
Chapter 161 – The Cliffhanger at Vault Zero
Arthur’s face drained of color for the first time.
“You’re lying.
Richard didn’t have the stomach for total destruction.
He was weak!”
“My father wasn’t weak,” Vincent said, his voice dropping to a deathly whisper.
“He was patient.”
With a sudden, violent movement, Emma grabbed Vincent’s left hand, while Vincent swung his right arm down toward the console.
“Marco—fire!”
Vincent roared.
Marco stepped from behind the cooling coil and fired three rapid rounds directly into the primary hydraulic reservoir overhead.
High-pressure hydraulic fluid sprayed over the catwalks, blinding the snipers and sending two of them crashing through the rusted safety rails to the concrete floor below.
Automatic gunfire instantly ripped through the chamber, sparks raining down like a shower of falling stars as bullets struck the brass consoles and shattered vacuum tubes in dazzling bursts of blue electrical fire.
Emma and Vincent lunged for the central console.
In the center of the control pedestal were two distinct, circular bronze wells lined with microscopic lancets.
“Together,” Emma whispered, looking into Vincent’s eyes.
There was no hesitation left between them.
No distance, no lies, no ghosts of the past.
Whatever sins their grandfathers had committed in the dark, they would finish tonight in the light.
They pressed their palms down simultaneously into the twin bronze wells.
The lancets bit deep.
A sharp, piercing chime chimed through the chamber, louder than the gunfire, vibrating through the massive iron pillars.
The clatter of the mechanical relays stopped dead.
The hundreds of glowing vacuum tubes shifted from a calm amber to a violent, pulsing crimson.
BIOMETRIC CONVERGENCE CONFIRMED, a synthetic, mechanical voice crackled through the antique PA horns mounted in the vault ceiling.
WARD PROTOCOL: ACCEPTED.
MORETTI PROTOCOL: ACCEPTED.
MASTER SCRAM SEQUENCE INITIATED.
Arthur lunged forward, screaming an incoherent curse, raising his heavy cane to strike Emma down himself, but Marco broke from cover, tackling the old patriarch to the floor in a flurry of limbs and shattered wood.
Suddenly, the floor beneath their feet didn’t just vibrate—it began to descend.
L’ensemble de la plateforme circulaire de la console, transportant Vincent, Emma, Arthur et Marco, se détacha des fondations supérieures de la fonderie, tombant dans un silo vertical souterrain profond qui plongeait dans la terre sous le lac Michigan.
Au-dessus d’eux, à travers l’ouverture carrée en retrait des portes blindées, Emma leva les yeux et vit que les passerelles s’effondraient dans les flammes des dynamos endommagées.
La plateforme de fer de l’ascenseur plongea, descendant de plusieurs centaines de mètres dans un monde souterrain obscur et oublié.
Lorsque la plateforme a finalement heurté le fond dans un fracas métallique assourdissant, les lumières de secours du silo profond se sont allumées, baignant la caverne d’une lueur étrange, d’un vert pâle.
Emma se releva en hâte, son arme dégainée, Vincent se levant à côté d’elle, sa main enroulée autour de la sienne, le sang dégoulinant de leurs paumes jointes sur le pont d’acier froid.
Ils n’étaient pas dans une salle de contrôle.
Ils se trouvaient dans une immense cale sèche souterraine creusée sous le lit du lac Michigan.
Et reposant devant eux dans les eaux souterraines, parfaitement intact, portant les marques de l’US Navy de 1972, se trouvait un sous-marin nucléaire massif à coque noire, ses rampes d’accès abaissées, de la vapeur sifflant de ses évents de refroidissement.
Debout en haut de la passerelle, entourée d’une vingtaine de silhouettes silencieuses et lourdement armées, vêtues d’uniformes de marine impeccables, se tenait une femme dont le visage coupa le souffle à Vincent, sa main tremblant alors qu’il tenait celle d’Emma.
C’était une femme d’un certain âge, élégante, arborant les pommettes hautes et les yeux sombres caractéristiques de la lignée Moretti — une femme qui portait la double bague sigillaire du Souverain à la main droite.
« Bienvenue à la maison, Vincent », dit la femme d’une voix douce, posée et étrangement familière.
« Arthur n’était qu’un leurre. »
