Chapter 37 - The Midnight Gambit
The console screamed.
A high-pitched, piercing alarm ripped through the subterranean corridor as red warning strobes flashed wildly.
*System Conflict Detected,* an automated artificial intelligence voice blared from the stone ceiling. *Secondary Key Input Overridden by Sovereign Consort Authority. Emergency Lockdown Protocol: Beta-Nine.*
"What did you do?!" Vivienne shrieked, her aristocratic composure shattering into a mask of pure, demonic rage. She lunged forward, drawing a nickel-plated derringer from the pocket of her coat.
"Nicholas, now!" I screamed.
Nicholas didn't need a fraction of a second. Even with his hands zip-tied, he drove his shoulders backward into the mercenary behind him, shattering the man’s nose with the back of his skull. As the guard stumbled, Nicholas kicked his legs out from under him, rolling across the stone floor, snapping the zip-tie against the sharp edge of the tungsten door hinge with a burst of brute strength.
Gunfire erupted.
The second mercenary fired twice, the bullets ricocheting off the tungsten door with deafening clangs, throwing showers of white-hot sparks into the darkness. Nicholas tackled him around the waist, slamming him against the granite bedrock wall until the rifle slipped from his hands.
Vivienne leveled her derringer directly at my chest, her finger tightening on the trigger. "You ungrateful little whore! I gave you life!"
"You gave me a life of running!" I yelled, diving forward.
The gun fired. A searing line of fire sliced across my left shoulder, ripping through my leather jacket. The shock knocked me sideways, but the adrenaline surging through my veins drowned the pain. I tackled Vivienne by the knees, sending both of us crashing onto the hard marble floor.
She fought like a wildcat, her manicured nails clawing toward my eyes, her teeth bared in an animalistic snarl. "I built this empire! It is mine!"
"It was never yours!" I screamed, grabbing her wrists and slamming them against the floor until the silver gun skittered across the stones. "You ran away because you were a coward! You couldn't handle the war, so you hid behind three nuclear submarines like a ghost!"
Nicholas appeared above us, kicking the weapon into the dark abyss of the drainage trench. He grabbed Vivienne by the lapels of her coat, hauling her off me and slamming her against the steel vault door.
"It’s over, Vivienne," Nicholas panted, his face bloodied, his eyes burning like twin coals. "The override Elena just initiated didn't open the vault. It slaved the building's main power array to the underwater acoustic decoy at Pier 12."
Vivienne’s eyes went wide with sudden, sickening realization. "No..."
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"Yes," Nicholas whispered coldly. "The United States Coast Guard and the Atlantic Fleet command just received your transponder coordinates masked as an unauthorized foreign tactical launch. You didn't just fail to take the vault. You just painted a target on your own three submarines."
***
