Chapter 14 - SHADOWS IN THE TRENCH
"A touch too late, Major Bennett," the intercom rasped.
It wasn't a mercenary speaker. It was Special Agent Vance—the OSI officer who had been coordinating our operation from Norfolk!
Ethan stood up from the floor, his face pale with disbelief. "Vance? You're a rogue?"
Through the glass window of the upper control bridge, Agent Vance stepped into view. He was holding an encrypted data drive hooked directly into the station's main server core, downloading the Trident Matrix files.
"Agent Vance is an alias, Commander Hale," Vance sneered, his voice amplified across the speakers. "My real name is Victor Vance—Gordon Bennett's nephew. My father helped Gordon steal Arthur's research forty years ago. We built this network together."
"You used OSI to track down my father!" I shouted, moving Arthur behind me.
"Of course," Victor laughed coldly. "Gordon was a sloppy fool. He thought he could outsmart the feds with cheap steel and tax fraud. But this matrix... this is worth billions to international defense buyers. And now that the download is ninety percent complete, Station Abyss Nine has served its purpose."
Victor pulled a red remote detonator from his pocket.
"The self-destruct sequence is active," Victor announced. "In three minutes, the titanium hull will detonate, and four thousand meters of ocean will crush you all into dust."
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Victor turned and ran down the upper gantry toward the syndicate submarine escape hatch!
"Avery, take your father!" Ethan yelled, sprinting toward the ladder. "I'm securing that drive!"
