Chapter 9 - The Neural Override
The seawater sloshed around Clare's waist, icy and smelling of deep ocean salt.
She held the black USB drive between her thumb and forefinger. On her left lay Vincent—the stranger she had hired for four hundred dollars, the man who had placed his body between her and a magnesium explosion twenty minutes ago. On her right stood Daniel—her blood, her childhood protector, the brother she had mourned for three long, agonizing years.
"Clare..." Vincent whispered, his breath whistling through his wounded chest. "Don't... don't give it to him..."
"Why, Vincent?" Clare asked, her voice cracking as tears ran down her face. "Why shouldn't I give it to him?"
"Because..." Vincent’s dark eyes looked up at her, raw and unshielded for the first time. "Because if he uploads that override... the hardware under my collarbone will discharge its security capacitors. It will kill the storage drive... but the electrical surge will stop my heart."
Clare froze, her gaze whipping to her brother. "Is that true, Daniel?"
Daniel didn't look away. His face was a stone mask of grim, tragic reality.
"The hardware was designed by Nikolai Vance, Clare," Daniel said quietly, his tone devoid of deceit. "It was never meant to be removed safely. If we don't discharge the capacitors, Nikolai’s tracking team will find him wherever he goes. In three hours, Vance will have another strike team here with a surgical unit. They won't care if he survives the extraction."
"So you were going to kill him?" Clare screamed, her voice echoing off the concrete walls of the culvert.
"I brought a defibrillator kit!" Daniel snapped, gesturing to the heavy black case strapped to his tactical harness. "It's a fifty-fifty chance, Clare! It's the only chance he has to be free of that syndicate!"
"Fifty-fifty?" Clare shook her head violently, clutching the USB drive against her chest. "No. No! I am not letting you gamble with his life!"
"Clare, listen to me!" Daniel took a step forward in the water, his voice rising in desperate panic. "Nikolai Vance is already moving down the cliff path! He has four men left! If we are still sitting in this tunnel in two minutes, none of us are walking out of here!"
Above them, through the iron storm drain hatch, the muffled sound of footsteps and low voices echoed down the concrete shaft.
"In here!" a voice shouted from above. "They went into the drainage culvert!"
"Decision time, Clare," Daniel whispered, drawing a sleek tactical sidearm from his chest rig and pointing it up the dark shaft.
Clare looked at Vincent. His eyes were fluttering closed, his skin turning an icy blue as blood continued to seep into the water.
"Do it," Vincent murmured weakly, his hand weakly catching the hem of her fleece sweater. "Do it, Clare... I'm tired of running..."
"No," Clare said.
She grabbed the medical kit Daniel had thrown in the water, opened it with one hand, and pulled out a heavy tube of quick-clotting surgical foam. She shoved the nozzle directly into the bullet wound in Vincent's side and slammed the plunger down.
Vincent gasped violently, his body twisting in agony as the expanding chemical foam sealed the torn artery and stopped the bleeding instantly.
"Hold on to me," Clare gritted through her teeth.
She picked up the USB drive, placed it onto a flat rock jutting out from the culvert wall, raised the heavy steel flashlight from the medical kit, and smashed it down with all her strength.
CRASH.
The black USB drive shattered into a hundred useless pieces of plastic and fractured silicon, washing away into the dark seawater.
Daniel stared at the floating debris in shock. "What did you just do?"
"I destroyed the override," Clare said, her eyes burning with fierce, uncompromising strength as she hauled Vincent's arm over her shoulder, supporting his weight. "Now we take the third option."
Daniel stared at his sister for two long seconds. Then, a faint, bitter smile touched the corners of his lips—the exact smile he used to give her when she outsmarted him in chess as a child.
"You really are our father's daughter," Daniel murmured.
May you like
He turned toward the mouth of the culvert, raising his rifle toward the rain-slicked rocks outside where Nikolai Vance's remaining men were descending the cliff path.
"The third option it is," Daniel said, setting his boots in the ocean tide. "Cover your ears."
