Chapter 6 - THE VELOCITY OF RUIN
Victor didn't wait for Vance to respond.
With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and crushed the silver crescent locket, short-circuiting its EMP limiter permanently.
But he didn't direct the pulse outward. He directed the energy inward, using his and Isabel’s combined neural network as a massive, organic antenna.
“Transferring,” Isabel whispered.
The glass walls of the safehouse began to spider-web with cracks as the sheer electromagnetic frequency of their combined minds shattered the molecular structure of the tempered glass.
Vance stumbled back, screaming to his men, "Shoot them! Shoot them now!"
But the soldiers couldn't fire. Their smart-weapons, linked to the Nexus Tech tactical network, began to glitch. The digital scopes strobed wildly before exploding in showers of sparks. The helicopters hovering overhead lost tail-rotor control, their digital avionics fried by the massive, localized microwave emission radiating from the house.
Two of the choppers veered violently, their blades clipping the cliffside before tumbling into the boiling ocean below in massive fireballs.
Inside Victor’s mind, the data was moving at the speed of light.
He didn't just see the code; he saw the entire global financial grid as a living, breathing map of light. He saw Vance’s accounts. He saw the Cabal’s hidden sovereign wealth funds.
With a single, unified thought, Victor and Isabel didn't decrypt the ledger to take it.
They deleted it.
"What are you doing?!" Vance screamed, looking down at his tablet as the screen began to cascade with red error codes. "No! Stop! You're destroying the assets!"
"If we can't have our lives, Marcus," Victor said, his eyes glowing with a faint, electric blue light, "then you don't get your world."
The global market began to feel the tremor. In Tokyo, New York, and London, automated trading algorithms began to fail. Billions of dollars in synthetic assets vanished into a digital black hole as the decryption protocols tore through the banking servers like a wildfire through dry brush.
"You're crazy!" Vance yelled, scrambling backward toward the remaining helicopter. "You're ruining everyone!"
"We're leveling the playing field," Isabel said.
With a final, massive surge of energy, the glass wall of the safehouse exploded outward in a million glittering shards. The shockwave knocked Vance off his feet, sending him rolling toward the edge of the cliff.
The remaining helicopter spun out of control, its tail rotor completely failing, before plunging into the sea.
Silence returned to the cliffside, save for the howling wind and the distant roar of the ocean.
Victor and Isabel stood in the ruins of the glass house, their hands still locked together.
But the victory was short-lived.
Victor looked down and saw blood dripping from Isabel’s ears. Her eyes were closing, her body slipping toward the floor.
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"Isabel!" he cried, catching her.
"The... the system," she gasped, her skin freezing cold. "The delete cycle... it didn't stop at the server, Victor. It’s deleting the host. It’s deleting us."
