HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED.
The red screen turns green.
“I’m in,” she breathes.
“Good girl.”
She plugs the Root Seed—Vargas’s titanium brick—into the interface she just built. The drive hums as it powers up.
INITIATING ROOT ACCESS …
A progress bar appears. 1%. 2%.
It’s crawling.
“It’s slow,” she says. “The architecture is ancient. It has to translate the kill code into a language the modern kernel understands.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.”
“Movement in the elevator shaft,”Whisper’s voice cuts in, calm and detached.“They’re rappelling down the service shaft. Three teams. Heavy armor.”
“They’re coming,” I say.
“I can’t make it go faster,” Talia says, her eyes glued to the screen. “But while it uploads … I’m in the file structure. I can see the logs.”
“Find the head,” I say. “Find out who pulls the strings.”
She dives into the data. I stand guard at the door, watching the empty corridor, waiting for the inevitable violence. Behind me, the rapidclack-clack-clackof her typing is the only sound over the server hum.
“I found Reed,” she says. “User ID: A_REED. He authorizes every kill.”
“We knew that.”
“But he reports to someone. Encrypted node.” She types faster. “Tracing the routing headers … Pentagon encryption standards … Match found.”
She stops typing.
“Jackson.”
I turn. Her face is pale in the blue light of the monitors.
“It goes to the top. The Admiral. I have a name.”
“Give it to me.”
“Harrison Cole.”
The name hits me like a physical blow. “The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? He retired two years ago.”
“He didn’t retire. He took Phoenix private. He’s sitting on the board of Nexus Holdings.”
“Contact,”Whisper says.“They’re on your floor. Breach imminent.”
I see movement at the far end of the corridor. Shadows detaching from shadows. Laser sights cutting through the gloom.
“Talia,” I say calmly. “Is the upload running?”
