Trois commandos de l’Avant-garde vêtus de noir sont tombés lors de la première salve, leurs casques brisés par les balles à haute vélocité.
Mais derrière eux surgit une vague incessante de soldats en armure, déferlant à travers l’entrée dévastée à coups de grenades assourdissantes et de tirs de suppression.
Vincent sentit une douleur aiguë et brûlante lui déchirer l’épaule gauche lorsqu’une balle eut percé sa plaque de blindage, mais il ne ralentit pas.
Il laissa tomber le fusil vide, dégaina ses deux pistolets et repoussa deux autres assaillants dans la neige, échangeant du sang pour chaque seconde dont Emma et Elena avaient besoin pour descendre dans la chambre forte.
Sous terre, dans une crypte de pierre oubliée qui exhalait une odeur de calcaire ancien et de sel, Emma Ward se tenait devant une console massive en laiton et en cuivre qui ressemblait à un orgue combiné à un superordinateur.
Elena Moretti leaned against the stone wall, clutching her side, breathing heavily.
“The terminal, Emma.
Insert the sequence.”
Emma approached the console.
On the screen, a single blinking prompt demanded:
INPUT PRIMARY OVERRIDE CIPHER.
Emma held her cut hand over the optical reader, letting her blood drip onto the glass, and began to type the seven-word phrase her mother had whispered to her on her deathbed—the phrase Emma had thought was only a nursery rhyme:
THE LION SLEEPS BENEATH THE FROZEN SHORE.
The massive computer banks erupted with blinding light.
Relays began to chatter at impossible speeds.
On the central terminal, a progress bar flared to life:
UPLOADING VANGUARD DECLASSIFICATION FILE (GLOBAL BROADCAST): 12%…
24%…
48%…
Suddenly, the heavy iron door at the top of the spiral staircase was blasted inward.
A body tumbled down the stone steps, crashing heavily onto the crypt floor.
It was Kane, his armor torn to shreds, barely clinging to life.
Behind him, descending the spiral stairs slowly, calmly, with his ivory-topped cane tapping against the stone steps, came Jonathan Vance.
His silver hair was wild, his eyes burning with the madness of a dying king.
Behind him were four elite bodyguards, dragging a battered, bleeding, and disarmed Vincent Moretti by his arms.
Vincent’s face was covered in crimson, his body exhausted, but his eyes were still locked onto Jonathan Vance with lethal promise.
Jonathan walked into the center of the crypt.
He looked at the glowing screen, then at the progress bar reaching 78%, and then he looked at Emma Ward.
“Stop the upload, Emma,” Jonathan whispered, raising a custom silver pistol and pointing it directly between Vincent Moretti’s eyes.
“Touch that terminal again, and Chicago’s most powerful billionaire dies on this stone floor like a stray dog.
Count to three, child.
Choose his life… or my destruction.”
Chapter 102 – The Trigger and the Key
The cold subterranean crypt trembled violently as the tremors of twin-rotor gunships rattled the centuries-old limestone arches.
Dust sifted down like pulverized bone, dusting Jonathan Vance’s silver hair and settling upon the shattered glass of the optical terminal.
“Press abort, Emma!”
Jonathan roared, his manicured composure finally stripping away into raw feral panic.
The silver barrel of his weapon pressed so deeply into Vincent Moretti’s forehead that it bruised the pale, blood-spattered skin.
“Do it!
Cancel the uplink, or the Moretti dynasty ends right here on this filth-encrusted stone!”
Vincent struggled against the crushing grip of the two monolithic mercenaries pinning his arms.
His breath was ragged, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips from cracked ribs and a ruptured lung, yet his gray eyes burned with unwavering steel.
He looked past Jonathan’s trembling gun straight into Emma’s terrified, wide eyes.
“Don’t do it, Emma,” Vincent growled, his voice a jagged rasp that echoed over the humming servers.
“Let it burn.
Let the whole rotten empire burn.
Press the final key!”
“Shut him up!”
Jonathan shrieked, cocking the hammer.
The metallic click was loud, sharp, and final.
“One!
Two—”
Emma’s trembling hand hovered over the pulsing red execution key.
The monitor flickered: UPLOAD PROGRESS: 94%…
96%…
98%…
For months, she had been just a girl who poured champagne at private galas, an invisible orphan surviving on tips in Chicago’s glittering high-society ballrooms until the night she stepped between a savage socialite and an old beggar woman.
That single choice had dragged her into the belly of the Moretti beast, into the ancient war of the Vanguard.
But looking at Vincent now—the man who had shielded her with his wealth, his men, and his own flesh—she realized she was no longer merely a bystander or a victim.
She was the final lock.
Emma met Vincent’s gaze.
In his eyes, she saw neither fear nor regret, only an unyielding command to finish what they had started.
