Chapter 17 - SIX HOURS TO RUIN
Project Meridian targeted nine clearing banks across three continents.
If the first bank failed, automated contracts would pull the others down within minutes.
Hospitals, energy grids, and food distribution networks would lose credit access before governments understood what had happened.
Sebastian assembled the only people he could still use.
Valerie understood Conrad.
Adrian understood the network.
Eleanor understood the archive.
Marcus, if alive, understood Margaret.
They entered the hidden levels beneath the tower through an abandoned subway ventilation shaft.
At the first security door, Adrian stopped.
“I cannot go farther.”
Sebastian looked at the biometric scanner.
It required Adrian’s pulse and retinal pattern.
“You built this.”
“I built it to kill anyone who forced me through.”
A wire beneath the scanner led to explosives in the tunnel.
Valerie found a second circuit concealed inside the wall.
Daniel Voss had designed an override based on a sequence of pension account numbers.
Eleanor remembered them.
The door opened.
They found Marcus in a glass cell, bruised but alive.
Margaret stood outside it.
She held no weapon.
“You are late,” she said.
Sebastian raised his gun.
“Where is Conrad?”
“Waiting for Valerie.”
Margaret explained that Conrad had never cared who controlled Ward Meridian.
He cared who could complete the final authorization.
Project Meridian required the biometric signatures of both his biological children.
Adrian had already been forced to provide his.
Valerie was the second.
Eleanor stared at Margaret.
“You knew.”
“I knew before you did.”
Margaret opened Marcus’s cell.
“I am not Conrad’s partner.”
“You are listed as Control,” Valerie said.
“Yes.”
Margaret looked toward the final door.
“Control is the person designated to stop the project by killing both heirs.”
A shot echoed.
Adrian staggered.
Blood spread across his chest.
Julian stood behind them with a smoking gun.
May you like
“One heir down,” he said.
Then he aimed at Valerie.
