Chapter 7 - The CollapseThe red button clicked, but nothing happened.
No alarms blared. No security shutters slammed down. Instead, the green lights lining the corridor flickered, turned a soft blue, and stabilized.
Arthur stared down at the remote in disbelief, frantically pressing the button again and again. "What did you do?!"
"You taught me yourself, Arthur," I said, taking another step forward as the heavy metal doors behind him clicked and locked automatically from the outside. "Never rely on a single system without a hardware override. While you were busy watching my every move through your office cameras, Walter and I routed our primary network through an isolated offline relay. Project Janus has been locked out of the corporate mainframes for twenty minutes."
With a sudden burst of speed, I lunged forward, tackling my father to the cold concrete floor before he could reach the emergency manual release lever on the wall.
The ebony cane clattered away, spinning across the tiles. Arthur fought back with surprising strength for a man his age, his fingers clawing desperately at my collar, but the years of corporate stress and arrogance had made him soft compared to the cold survival instincts I had forged since the day Julia left my life.
I pinned his arms to the ground, pinning him beneath my weight, breathing heavily.
"You lost, Arthur," I whispered fiercely into his ear.
Before he could answer, the reinforced glass window of Julia's containment room hissed. The pneumatic seals released, and the heavy glass door swung open automatically.
A cough echoed from inside the room.
Then another.
May you like
"Nathan..." a weak, familiar voice called out.
My heart skipped a beat. I pushed off my father, leaving him pinned to the floor by the automatic security cuffs that sprang out of the baseboards, and sprinted into the medical room.
