Chapter 4 - The Micro-SurgeryThe tension in the lab was thick enough to cut with a diamond-edge laser. Maria Bennett clutched her chest, her breathing shallow as she looked between the billionaire, the disgraced scientist, and her young daughter.
"This is insane," Maria whispered, stepping forward and taking Lily's hand. "Ethan, we are getting out of here right now. Call the police, call the FBI, do whatever you have to do, but leave my daughter out of this."
"Maria, look around us," Ethan said, his voice urgent but strangely gentle as he looked at the woman who had scrubbed his floors for two years without him ever learning her name. "The building is locked down. The comms are jammed. If that data leaves this room, my company goes bankrupt, thousands of people lose their jobs, and this technology falls into hands that will use it to start a war. We don't have time to wait for the authorities."
He knelt down on one knee, looking directly into Lily’s brilliant, steady eyes.
"Lily," Ethan said softly. "You heard what he said. The master key is on a micro-token inside him. Is there any other way to bypass the encryption?"
Lily stared at the scrolling code on the screen, her brow furrowed in intense concentration. She closed her eyes for three long seconds, listening to the low, harmonic hum of the Prometheus Engine spinning down in the center of the room.
"There's one way," Lily said, opening her eyes.
"Name it," Ethan replied instantly.
"The hardware token isn't just a storage drive," Lily explained, pointing at a small medical diagnostic kit sitting on a nearby emergency supply cart. "Dad used to work on medical micro-pumps before he got sick. That token is an RFID-enabled transponder. It pulses a verification signal every sixty seconds to confirm the holder's biometric heartbeat."
She looked directly at Dr. Vale, who suddenly turned an alarming shade of pale green.
"If we can extract it without stopping his heart, or if we can trick the local router into accepting a simulated biometric feedback loop from the medical cart's defibrillator pads, we can spoof the master key access," Lily said matter-of-factly.
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Ethan slowly stood up, a dangerous, calculating smile spreading across his face. He turned to his head of security, a massive, stone-faced man named Jax.
"Jax," Ethan said smoothly. "Dr. Vale seems to have swallowed something that belongs to CrossTech. Let's help him cough it up."
