Everyone watched Victoria raise her hand against a helpless elderly woman, but only one waitress dared to stop her—and seconds later, Chicago’s most powerful billionaire walked straight toward them.

The bridge of the *Tartarus* was an eerie hybrid of 1970s analog naval dials and modern, hyper-advanced holographic displays. Through the forward observation dome, illuminated by powerful exterior floodlights, the dark, silty bed of Lake Michigan drifted past, four hundred feet beneath the surface. Above them lay millions of tons of ice and black water; ahead lay the underwater foundations of Chicago.

Helena Moretti stood before the central command console, her back turned to the door, hands clasped behind her uniform. Two heavily armed lieutenants flanked the raised platform.

"You always were stubborn, Vincent," Helena said without looking back as the hydraulic blast doors parted, revealing Vincent and Emma with weapons drawn. "Even as a child, when your father told you that the family name was about honor, you believed him. Look where honor brought this city."

She gestured toward the panoramic displays. The screens showed live feeds intercepted from surface networks: the city of Chicago was in complete chaos. Blackouts gripped the loop; emergency vehicles clogged Michigan Avenue; the Sterling empire’s collapse had triggered a systemic banking panic across the Midwest.

"Chicago is rotting," Helena said, turning to face them, her eyes ablaze with fanatical certainty. "Greedy politicians, petty oligarchs like Arthur, weak men squabbling over crumbs. The Sovereign protocol was never meant to destroy the world. It was designed to reset it. To blind every radar, freeze every financial account, and purge the corrupted slate."

"And put you on the throne?" Vincent asked coldly.

"Put the *Moretti* name where it belongs!" Helena snarled, her aristocratic composure slipping for a fraction of a second. "At the head of an untouchable dynasty! Everything I did—faking my death, abandoning you to that spineless father of yours, funding the Sovereign network from the abyss—was to build this moment! And you dare raise a gun against your own mother?"

"You died thirty years ago," Vincent said, his voice flat, devoid of mercy. "The woman standing before me is just another monster that needs to be put down."

"Try it," Helena whispered, stepping back toward the primary console. "The moment my vital signs cease, the fail-deadly protocol triggers. Six Sovereign cruise missiles will launch directly through the lake ice into the heart of the national energy corridor. The only way to disarm the launch is the biological override."

She smiled, pointing at the biometric scanner glowing crimson at the center of the console.