Chapter 12 - The Final Stand in the Server Core
The heavy air in the server room turned instantly toxic with the smell of burnt gunpowder and ozone. Marissa reacted purely on muscle memory, shoving Lily hard behind the reinforced glass structure of the master terminal just as Sterling squeezed the trigger.
*CRACK!*
A heavy-caliber bullet punched clean through the metal casing of a server rack beside Marissa’s head, sending a violent shower of copper sparks raining down onto the floor.
The two mercenaries flanking Sterling raised their assault rifles, sweeping their barrels toward the glass partition where Lily was cowering.
“Don’t you touch her!” Marissa roared.
Discarding her empty MP5, Marissa lunged forward with the terrifying speed of a cornered wolf, tackling the nearest mercenary squarely in the chest. They crashed hard against a row of humming server towers, the heavy metal racks groaning under the impact. Marissa drove her elbow upward into the guard’s jaw with bone-cracking force, sending him slumping unconscious to the floor.
She instantly grabbed the fallen operative’s assault rifle, pivoting sharply to face the second guard just as he pulled his trigger. A searing line of fire grazed Marissa’s shoulder, tearing through her jacket and hot flesh, but she didn’t even flinch. She raised the barrel and squeezed the trigger in one fluid motion.
*Rat-tat-tat!*
The second guard dropped instantly, kicking up dust from the concrete floor.
That left only Sterling.
The silver-haired arms dealer stood alone in the center of the server room, his pistol still raised, aiming directly at Marissa’s heart. But his hand was trembling—just a fraction of a millimeter, but enough to betray the sudden, creeping terror of a man who realized his empire of shadows had finally collapsed around him.
“You think killing me solves anything?” Sterling sneer-laughed, his voice echoing shrilly off the towering server racks. “Project Artemis isn’t just a building, Sergeant. It’s a global network. Dozens of other facilities, hundreds of other corporate clients. My arrest—or my death—won’t stop the machine.”
“Maybe not,” Marissa said, stepping forward through the smoke, her boots crunching on glass shards, her eyes locked on Sterling’s face with absolute, unyielding coldness. “But it stops *you*.”
Before Sterling could pull the trigger, a small, dark shadow darted out from behind the glass partition. Lily rushed forward with lightning speed, holding a heavy, unshielded copper grounding cable ripped directly from the terminal's power array. With a fierce cry, she swung the live cable hard against Sterling’s wrist.
A blinding blue arc of high-voltage current snapped violently from the cable into Sterling’s arm.
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Sterling let out a high-pitched, inhuman scream of agony as the massive electrical shock coursed through his body. His eyes rolled back into his head, his pistol slipped from his twitching fingers, and he crashed heavily onto the concrete floor, completely unconscious, wisps of smoke rising from the cuffs of his expensive wool suit.
***
