Chapter 5 - The Milwaukee GridBefore Nora could pull her hand out of the sack, the heavy crash of the kitchen door swinging open made her jump.
Agent Vance stood in the doorway, his partner right behind him holding a shattered piece of floorboard.
"Nothing under the floorboards except outdated copper wiring," Vance said, his eyes narrowing as he noticed Nora standing suspiciously close to the baking supply shelves. A thin dusting of white flour coated her knuckles. "What do you have in your hand, Miss Bellamy?"
Nora’s mind raced at light-speed. If she handed over the titanium drive, Vance and his shadow agency would control the orbital grid, and Julian Sterling would likely be hunted down and executed before the sun set. If she refused, she would be arrested for treason under federal statutes that didn't even allow for a phone call.
She needed a distraction. And she needed it right now.
"I have the flour my father used to bake his signature sourdough," Nora said, her voice remarkably steady as she pulled her hand out of the sack, letting a cloud of white powder drift into the air. "The flour you interrupted your little federal tantrum to ruin."
Vance took a slow, calculated step forward, his hand hovering inches from his holster. "You're playing a very dangerous game, Nora. You think you're protecting a hero? Julian Sterling isn't a victim. The software on that grid controls every automated power grid, traffic nexus, and financial exchange in North America. If someone like Sterling drops the firewall, he can shut down the entire eastern seaboard in ninety seconds."
"And if your agency controls it?" Nora challenged, stepping away from the shelf. "You'd use it to keep people like Arthur here comfortable while the rest of the city freezes in alleyways."
Arthur, still cowering on the floor, let out a pathetic squeak of protest.
Suddenly, the overhead lights in the Lantern House flickered violently, then died completely.
The emergency battery-backup lights hummed to life, washing the café in an eerie, sickly green glow.
Across the street, every traffic light on Wisconsin Avenue simultaneously flashed bright red, locking up morning rush-hour traffic into a gridlock of blaring horns and screeching tires.
"What did you do?" Vance snapped, drawing his weapon and leveling it directly at Nora's chest. "Did you trigger the upload?"
"I haven't touched anything!" Nora yelled, holding her empty hands up to show she was holding nothing.
The television above the corner table flickered back on—not to the local news station, but to a pristine, high-definition live video feed.
The face filling the screen wasn't an anchorwoman. It was Julian Sterling.
He was sitting in the back of a moving vehicle, staring directly into the camera lens with those piercing gray eyes. Behind him, the Milwaukee skyline blurred past under the cold morning sun.
"Agent Vance," Sterling’s voice echoed crisply through the café’s old speaker system, calm and conversational. "Put the gun down. You’re pointing it at an unarmed civilian who was kind enough to give a freezing man a bowl of soup. It’s bad form for a federal operative."
Vance spun around, aiming his pistol at the television screen as if he could shoot the billionaire through the glass. "Sterling! You're surrounded. The entire airspace over Wisconsin is locked down. You can't run."
"Run?" A faint, cold smile touched the corner of Julian’s mouth on the screen. "Agent Vance, I’m not running. I’m broadcasting. Right now, every encrypted file your agency stole from my labs five years ago is being mirrored across three thousand independent public nodes worldwide. The grid isn't a weapon. It’s an insurance policy."
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Julian’s gaze shifted slightly, looking past the camera lens as if he were looking directly at Nora standing in the kitchen doorway.
"And as for Miss Bellamy... she’s coming with me."
