It was over. Halcyon had won. Ryan had died for nothing. I had lost my brother, and the ghosts would remain in the shadows forever.
But out on the tarmac, through the blood and the dust, Ryan’s hand shot out.
His fingers, slick with his own blood, closed around the heavy metal connector joining the main trunk line to the tower array. He didn’t try to pull it with muscle. He wrapped the cable around his forearm, gritted his teeth, and rolled his entire body weight violently down the embankment.
The connector snapped. Sparks showered the base of the tower.
On the tablet in front of me, the screen froze.
Error. Physical Connection Lost. Upload Failed. Data Corrupted. Initiating Failsafe Wipe…
Because the upload was severed mid-handshake, Halcyon’s automated defense protocols misread it as a hostile breach. The system didn’t lock the files; it began dumping them. Trillions of bytes of encrypted data—names, bank accounts, assassination orders—were suddenly hemorrhaging onto the open, unencrypted base servers where every intelligence agency on earth could see them.
