Chapter 17 - THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS
Panic instantly rippled through the mercenaries on the upper catwalk.
Several guards began looking at each other, their hands wavering on their rifles.
“He’s lying!” Arthur roared, slamming his walking cane violently against the steel railing.
“He’s bluffing to save his own skin!”
“Kill him now!”
Before any mercenary could pull a trigger, a loud red strobe light began flashing across the factory walls.
A harsh digital siren began to wail through the loudspeakers.
A automated computerized voice echoed through the facility:
“Facility self-destruct sequence activated.”
“Eight minutes remaining until detonation.”
Eleanor’s eyes went wide with pure terror.
“Ethan, you lunatic!” she screamed, struggling against her handcuffs.
“You’re going to blow us all to pieces!”
“It’s the only way to end this, Eleanor,” Ethan said coldly, looking at her without a trace of sympathy.
“The network dies tonight.”
“All of it.”
Arthur pointed his shotgun down at Ethan and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The heavy buckshot blasted into the concrete doorframe right above Ethan’s head, spraying razor-sharp stone fragments everywhere.
Ethan ducked into the vault room, pulling Eleanor inside with him and slamming the heavy iron vault door shut.
The massive steel slab sealed shut with a deafening thud.
Outside, heavy gunfire began hammering relentlessly against the exterior of the iron door.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Inside the sealed vault, the sound was muffled into dull, rhythmic thumps.
Eleanor sank to the floor, her back pressed against the iron wall, her face pale as snow.
“We’re trapped in a tomb,” she whimpered, her usual arrogance completely shattered.
“We’re going to burn alive in here.”
Ethan ignored her, walking over to the glass cylinder in the center of the room.
He looked at the encrypted satellite drive floating in the clear liquid.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and connected it to the external port on the pedestal.
“Data transfer initiated,” the automated voice confirmed softly.
“What are you doing?” Eleanor asked, frowning through her terror.
“I promised my daughter I would come back,” Ethan said, watching the progress bar tick up on his phone screen.
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“I’m copying the master file directly to a cloud server managed by federal authorities.”
“When this place burns, the truth will still survive.”
