Chapter 13 - THE BATTLE FOR THE MAINFRAME"Get her out of here!" Alessandro barked over the frantic sounds of a struggle, pinning Marcus’s arms to the floor with a knee while using his free hand to lock a pair of tactical restraints around his wrists.
"Mommy, I dropped my puzzle!" Emma cried, pointing back toward the examination table.
"Leave it, baby, we're going right now!" I scooped her up into my arms, pressing her face into my shoulder, and sprinted toward the blast door where two of Alessandro’s guards stood ready to cover our retreat.
Suddenly, a loud, synthetic alarm shrieked throughout the bunker.
“WARNING: SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. OVERRIDE FAILED. T-MINUS SIXTY SECONDS.”
Marcus laughed hysterically from the floor as Alessandro hauled him up by the collar of his shirt. "You think you can just walk out of here, Alessandro? I wired the entire subterranean grid to blow the moment my biometric connection was severed! This whole block is going up in flames!"
"Shut it down!" Alessandro snarled, slamming Marcus against the mainframe console. "Where is the manual override code?"
"There is no code!" Marcus yelled over the deafening klaxon. "It's voice-activated! And it only recognizes my voice—or a direct blood descendant!"
I froze. I looked down at Emma, then back at Alessandro, who was already dragging Marcus toward the exit while signaling his men to pull back.
"Elena, get to the armored SUV with Emma!" Alessandro shouted, his face stained with soot and sweat as he fought to drag my insane uncle toward the tunnel exit.
"No!" I yelled back, handing Emma safely to the lead guard. "If it needs a blood descendant's voice, I'm Victor Vance's daughter! My bloodline is linked to this mainframe's secondary firewall!"
Without waiting for his permission, I threw myself in front of the primary computer terminal. The countdown on the screen flashed in aggressive, blinding red numbers: 00:35... 00:34...
I slammed my palm down onto the bio-scanner plate beside the monitor, letting the jagged edge of a broken glass shard from the desk slice open my skin. A drop of my blood smeared across the glass sensor.
The synthetic voice chimed instantly: “BIOMETRIC OVERRIDE RECOGNIZED. DAUGHTER OF VICTOR VANCE. STATE COMMAND.”
"Cancel self-destruct sequence!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, my voice cracking with adrenaline and terror. "Authorization code: Vance-Zero-Zero-One!"
The screen blinked yellow. A tense, agonizing three seconds ticked by.
00:12... 00:11... 00:10...
Then, the flashing red numbers turned solid, calming green.
“SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ABORTED. MAINFRAME SECURED. WELCOME, ADMINISTRATOR.”
The piercing klaxon died instantly, replaced by a heavy, breathless silence in the underground bunker.
Alessandro released Marcus, sprinted across the room, and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me into a fierce, suffocating embrace that nearly cracked my ribs.
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"Are you out of your mind?!" he yelled, his voice thick with a raw, terrifying vulnerability I had never heard from him before. "You could have killed yourself!"
"We're alive," I whispered, burying my face against his chest as the adrenaline finally began to drain out of my veins, leaving my limbs shaking uncontrollably. "And so is our family."
