Chapter 58 - The Siberia Black Site: Emergence at Project Tartarus
The air inside the vault was frigid, sterile, and silent.
It was a circular chamber fifty yards across, lined from floor to ceiling with blinking supercomputer banks, liquid-nitrogen cooling towers, and colossal bronze relief maps of the global banking system. In the center of the room, suspended over an illuminated glass platform, sat the Sovereign Console—an archaic, terrifyingly powerful terminal built from brass, titanium, and Cold War vacuum tubes hybridized with modern quantum computing modules.
This was the nerve center of the Three-Trillion-Dollar shadow economy. The black ledger that Arthur Vance had hidden from the world.
Richard Vance leaned against the central console, panting heavily, blood staining his naval trench coat from a shrapnel wound across his ribs. He wiped his face with a trembling hand, smearing soot and sweat across his pale skin.
"We made it," he whispered, a mad, triumphant laugh bubbling up from his throat. "We survived. The wolves are locked outside the gate."
"For now," Sofia said coldly, backing toward the perimeter wall, her rifle aimed straight at Richard's chest. "Those blast doors will hold for twenty minutes against military-grade shaped charges. You have twenty minutes to explain how we walk out of here alive, Richard."
Richard didn't look at her. His eyes were entirely consumed by the glowing green monitors of the terminal.
"We don't need to walk out," Richard said, his voice rising in euphoric delirium. "Once the transfer is initiated, the Tartarus satellite network will trigger a global financial EMP. Every clearinghouse from Wall Street to Tokyo will crash. The only liquid currency left on Earth will be held in the Vance sovereign blockchain accounts. The world will beg us to restore order. We will be greater than kings."
He turned to me, holding out his trembling, bloodied hands.
"The child, Victoria. Place her on the biometric cradle. And insert Arthur’s key."
I stood ten feet away from him, looking at the man who had abandoned me, who had allowed my dignity to be torn to shreds for the sake of numbers on a screen. The baby had finally stopped crying, exhausted, her tiny blue eyes blinking against the harsh fluorescent lights of the vault.
"You really believe that power is worth all of this?" I asked, my voice echoing hollowly in the vast chamber. "Look at you, Father. You’re bleeding to death in an abandoned bunker at the edge of the world. Christian is at the bottom of the Arctic ocean. Camilla is outside blowing through your last line of defense. And you’re still talking about ruling the world."
"It is the only thing that matters!" Richard screamed, slamming his fist onto the brass console. "Without power, you are nothing! You are the woman whose husband cheated on her with an intern! You are the laughingstock of the Geneva country clubs! Don't you understand? I am offering you total, unassailable vengeance! I am giving you the power to bring the entire world to its knees!"
"I already took my vengeance," I said quietly, stepping toward the console. "I took it the day I sold Christian's mansion while he was on his honeymoon. I took it when I watched his bank accounts empty to zero. I don't need three trillion dollars to know who I am, Richard."
"Give me the child!" he roared, lunging forward with his sidearm raised.
Before he could cross the glass platform, a heavy, metallic clang reverberated through the ceiling of the vault.
A section of the ventilation grating gave way with a deafening screech. A flash-bang grenade dropped into the center of the room, detonating with a blinding white light and an ear-shattering concussive blast that knocked all of us to the floor.
My ears rang violently. My vision was swimming in spots of white and purple. Through the haze of smoke, I saw three figures rappelling down tactical ropes from the ceiling shaft.
They landed on the glass platform with feline grace, their weapons raised.
The lead operative stepped forward, unzipping her tactical winter hood and pulling off her ballistic goggles. Long, honey-blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders. Her porcelain face was unmarked, her lips curved into that same innocent, devastating pout that had smiled at Christian over wedding cake in the Maldives.
May you like
Camilla.
"Hello, Victoria," Camilla purred, her voice dripping with venomous sweetness as she pointed a suppressed tactical pistol directly at my father’s face. "Hello, Richard. Did you really think you were the only ones who knew how to play dead?"
