Chapter 6 - THE DEAD MAN’S SWITCHArthur’s voice paused over the intercom, a sudden edge of suspicion creeping into the old man's tone. "What are you talking about, Marcus?"
Marcus walked slowly toward our glass cell, holding the neural-interface headset in one hand and a small, heavy titanium flash drive in the other. He stopped just outside our cell, looking down through the glass at Leo, who was now barely conscious in my arms.
"Sarah didn't just steal the corporate ledgers from Zurich," Marcus said, his voice completely level, lacking any of the sycophantic obedience he usually displayed toward his father. "She stole the generational inheritance trust. The entire capital reserve that funds the Horizon Syndicate's global operations."
"You lying bastard," Sarah spat from the floor down the hall, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth as she pushed herself up on one elbow. "Marcus helped me take it, Dad. He was the inside man all along."
My jaw dropped. I stared at Marcus, my mind struggling to reassemble everything I thought I knew.
"Marcus?" I whispered.
Marcus didn't look at me. He kept his eyes locked on the ceiling camera where his father was listening.
"You always favored corporate compliance over loyalty, Dad," Marcus said, raising the titanium flash drive so the security camera could see it clearly. "You thought I was your loyal lapdog, cleaning up Sarah's messes. But I was just waiting for the right moment to cut the throat of the beast."
"Traitorous little rat," Arthur’s voice roared over the intercom, the refined facade completely shattering into pure, unadulterated fury. "Guards! Kill them all! Take the drive and secure the boy!"
The four armed guards surrounding Marcus instantly raised their rifles, pivoting to aim directly at him.
But Marcus didn't flinch. He simply smiled, raised his thumb, and pressed a tiny physical button on the side of the titanium flash drive.
A small, high-pitched beep emitted from the device, followed by a rhythmic, flashing green light.
"What did you do?" one of the guards shouted, lowering his rifle by a fraction of an inch in sheer panic.
"I just uploaded the master decryption key and the entire financial trail of the Horizon Syndicate to a dead-man’s switch server hosted on five decentralized nodes across three continents," Marcus said smoothly. "If my heartbeat stops, or if this drive isn't synchronized with my biometric signature every sixty seconds, the encryption drops. Every politician, judge, and CEO funding this bunker goes to prison by morning."
The guards froze. The rifles wavered in their hands. They weren't just mercenaries taking orders anymore; they were self-preserving men calculating their own survival.
"Shoot him! Shoot him anyway!" Arthur’s voice screamed frantically over the intercom, the speaker beginning to screech with feedback as the control room audio feed overloaded.
Marcus stepped forward, casually swiping a master keycard across the biometric panel beside our holding cell door.
HISS.
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The thick glass door slid open.
"Grab the boy, Claire," Marcus said, his voice dropping all pretense of games as he tossed me a heavy, loaded Glock he had drawn from his shoulder holster. "We're walking out of here. And if anyone tries to stop us, we burn the whole world down together."
