Chapter 75
CHAPTER 75 — THE ARCHITECT'S REVENGE
But the lift didn't move. Charles Whitmore stood at the central console, his hands flying across the black marble interface, his face twisted in a rare display of aristocratic rage.
"You think a localized surge can stop the Monarch Grid, Alexander?!" Charles shouted over the roar of the failing cooling systems. "I built this house! I built your heart!"
He struck a master key on the console.
Instantly, Alexander’s independent pacemaker let out a sharp, continuous electronic scream. Alexander fell to his knees, his hands clutching his chest as his pulse was forced into an immediate, lethal ventricular fibrillation.
"Alex!" Claire screamed, trying to turn back, but Anna caught her arm, dragging her and Lily toward the emergency stairwell behind the server racks
"We can't save him, Claire! The console has total biometric control over his unit!" Anna shouted, her voice thick with tears as she fired a suppressive volley toward Charles’s security team, who were pouring into the vault from the upper levels. "If we stay, he dies for nothing!"
Alexander looked up through the smoke, his vision failing, his hand weakly pointing toward the black marble console.
"Burn it... Claire..." he gasped, his voice a broken whisper as his heart monitor flatlined completely. "Burn... the ledger..."
May you like
With a final, desperate surge of strength, Alexander pulled a heavy, military-grade thermite grenade from his tactical belt, pulled the pin with his teeth, and dropped it directly into the exposed wiring of the primary server core beneath him.
The explosion was a white-hot sun that swallowed the center of the vault, melting the steel support structures and plunging the entire laboratory into a blinding, smoking inferno.
