Chapter 90 - The Awakening of the Core
Before Clara could comprehend the shift, the Primary Gate didn't swing open further. Instead, heavy titanium blast curtains slammed down over every access tunnel leading to the bridge, sealing the Consortium's reinforcements on the other side of the cavern.
Simultaneously, the floor beneath the bridge groaned.
"You idiot!" Clara shrieked at Emma, drawing a small chrome pistol from her coat. "What did you do?!"
"I didn't do anything," Emma said, stepping back toward Vincent. "My grandfather always told me: *'The lock knows who holds the key, but it also knows who holds the whip.'*"
"Kill them both!" Clara screamed.
Vincent reacted instantly. He lunged forward, swiping his arm across Clara's wrist, disarming her with a sickening crack as her chrome pistol spun into the depths below. He threw Clara against the console, pinning her by the throat.
The masked figure pulled an automatic machine pistol from his robes, firing directly at Vincent.
Vincent spun Clara around, using her as a human shield. Three heavy rounds punched through Clara Vance's chest. She gasped, blood bubbling to her lips as she looked down in horrific realization.
"You... promised..." Clara choked out, before going limp in Vincent's grip.
Vincent let her body fall, diving behind the central console just as the masked man emptied his magazine into the bronze paneling.
"You think this changes anything, Moretti?!" the masked man shouted, tossing the empty weapon aside and drawing two serrated combat daggers from his belt. "The Consortium owns the banks! We own the military satellites! Even if you seal this vault, we will starve this city into submission within seventy-two hours!"
Vincent drew his combat knife, stepping out from behind the console, his eyes blazing with feral intensity. "You forgot one thing, masked coward."
"And what is that?"
"Chicago doesn't belong to the banks," Vincent growled, lunging forward with blistering speed. "It belongs to the people who built it."
Steel clashed against steel in a shower of brilliant orange sparks. The masked man was fast, trained in elite close-quarters assassination techniques, but Vincent fought with the raw, unrelenting brutality of a man protecting everything he loved.
Vincent deflected a thrust aimed at his throat, stepped inside the man's guard, and drove a savage elbow into the side of the porcelain mask. The mask fractured down the middle, splintering into shards.
The masked man stumbled back, his face revealed.
Emma gasped in shock.
The man beneath the mask was not a stranger.
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It was Senator Thomas Sterling—the supposedly missing patriarch of the Sterling family, the man who had been declared dead in an international plane crash seven years ago.
***
