Krueger smiled faintly. “Then why are you still here?”
Dante took a step forward. Then another.
Krueger’s hand shifted toward the panel—an exposed node wired into the core of the shielding.
Dante’s voice dropped low. Calm. Clear. “I’m not here to stop you.”
Krueger paused.
“I’m here to replace you.”
Dante kept walking. “You said it needed a hand on the switch. You thought you were the only one willing to die for a cause.” He lowered the pistol. “You were wrong.”
Krueger’s smile wavered, just for a second. “Don’t play martyr. You’re bluffing.”
Dante stopped two feet away, his breath ragged. “No bluff. You want this device armed? Give it to me. Walk away. Let me end it. Let me be the story.”
Krueger stared at him, eyes narrowing, calculating. “You think you’d survive long enough to disarm it?”
“I’m not planning to.”
Krueger’s lips parted—to answer, to mock, to strike. But before he could speak, the vault door behind them creaked open.
“DON’T MOVE!”Ford Cox’s voice echoed like a gunshot.
Krueger spun, his hand still on the bomb.
“Ford, his hand is on the trigger!” Dante called in warning.
Ford leveled his sidearm straight at the general’s head through the tiny space. “Step back. Now.”
For one terrifying moment, no one moved. Dante stood still, heart a thunderclap in his chest.
Krueger looked between them—Ford, holding his gun and one eye visible, and Dante, exhausted, shaking, also armed.
Then Krueger did something Dante didn’t expect.He laughed—a low, bitter chuckle, like a man realizing too late he wasn’t the cleverest in the room. “You people always underestimate pain, but you forget what it builds.” He reached for the panel.
Ford cursed. The door was frozen, open as far as it would go.
Dante lunged.
Time didn’t slow.His brain just started processing faster. Krueger’s hand twitched toward the switch—pale, callused skin, yellowed fingernails, knuckles bruised from some old break.
That hand would end cities. That hand had taken Daniel apart and called it parenting.
No.
Dante's muscles screamed, barely responding, but they moved. Tunnel lights blurred into vertical streaks. His foot slipped on slick concrete, his shoulder exploding in pain—didn’t matter. He was closing the distance.
The gun clattered from his hand—forgotten. All that mattered now was the arm. The switch. The weight of one decision that couldn’t be unmade.
He hit Krueger hard, not with force but with momentum—a crashing collision that knocked them both flat to the ground.
Something cracked—his rib? Krueger’s shoulder? The device housing?
No time. Krueger snarled, trying to wrench free. Dante locked his arms around him, driving them both backward, toward the wall, away from the switch, the old man’s breath on his face—hot, bitter, metallic.
“You’re too late,” Krueger hissed. “You’re already too late.”
