Chapter 115 - The Besieged Sanctuary
The assault on Foundry Seven began without warning or parley. A high-explosive thermite charge blasted through the secondary steel roll-up door on the east wing, sending a shower of molten sparks roaring across the concrete floor. The concussive blast blew out the remaining reinforced glass windows, letting in the biting Indiana gale.
"Move! To the tunnel entrance!" Vincent commanded, his voice ringing with absolute authority. He unholstered his weapon, firing four controlled shots through the smoke to suppress the first two breach operatives entering through the breach.
The attackers were not Katherine’s standard corporate security; these were the Council’s *Iron Vanguard*, heavy shock troops clad in pressurized tactical armor and armed with suppressed carbines. They moved with mechanical efficiency, sweeping the foundry floor with laser sights.
"Carter, take Sofia and Emma to the locomotive tunnel beneath the slag pit!" Vincent ordered, exchanging fire as armor-piercing rounds chewed through the brick wall beside him.
"I am not leaving you, Vincent!" Emma yelled over the din of automatic rifle fire. She ducked behind an iron lathe as a spray of bullets pinged off the vintage steel casing. Spotting an abandoned submachine gun dropped by a fallen guard, Emma picked it up without hesitation. Her hands, once trained only to balance heavy dinner trays and handle porcelain cups under the abusive glare of wealthy patrons, held the weapon with surprising, desperate steadiness.
"Emma, go!" Vincent shouted, reloadng smoothly behind cover. "If they take you, the drive dies with you!"
"We fight together or we die together!" Emma fired a burst toward the catwalk above, where a sniper had just set up a firing perch. The rounds struck the metal railing, forcing the operative to duck back, spoiling his shot at Vincent’s exposed flank.
Vincent looked at her through the sulfurous smoke, an intense, feral pride burning in his eyes. "You really are a Moretti at heart."
"I am a Ward," Emma retorted, dropping another fresh magazine into the well. "And we don't back down from bullies."
From the smoke-filled entrance, a tall figure walked calmly into the crossfire, flanked by two towering bodyguards with ballistic shields. It was not Katherine Ward, but Julian Sterling—the disgraced heir of the Sterling empire whose fall from grace had begun that fateful night when Emma defied his family’s vanity.
Julian’s face was half-paralyzed, scarred from the previous confrontations at Pier 42, his designer suit replaced with black combat gear. A manic grin stretched across his twisted features.
"Emma! Vincent!" Julian shouted through an electric megaphone, his voice grating and triumphant. "You took everything from my family! You ruined my father, you burned down our estate, you turned the Sterlings into pariahs! But High Chancellor Ward made me a commander. Give me the drive, and I will let you watch each other die!"
"Julian," Vincent called back from behind the iron kiln, his tone dripping with cold contempt. "You were an errand boy in a silk suit, and you're an errand boy in Kevlar. Katherine used your family as disposable bait, and she is doing it again."
"Die, Moretti!" Julian screamed, leveling an assault rifle and firing indiscriminately into the foundry pillars.
"Now, Carter!" Vincent shouted into his comm-link.
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From the subterranean control room beneath the foundry floor, Carter threw the primary breaker for the foundry's dormant induction furnaces. A massive surge of auxiliary power surged through the overhead crane systems. With a deafening groan of tortured iron, a twenty-ton industrial electromagnetic scrap crane swing across the ceiling, sweeping directly over Julian’s vanguard.
***
