Chapter 96 - The Burning Skyline
"Vincent?" Emma’s voice cut through the dark, small and strained.
"I’m here," Vincent’s deep voice answered instantly. A second later, the soft amber glow of a tactical chem-light illuminated the darkness as he cracked it against his knee.
The vault door was blackened, warped, and welded shut from the extreme electrical discharge. But through the cracked, heat-stressed viewing port, the catwalk outside was gone. The breach in the cavern ceiling was still open, framed by smoke and falling flakes of winter snow. Above them, the heavy gunship had pulled up out of the blast radius, hovering fifty yards higher in the freezing Chicago sky.
"The door is fused," Vincent assessed, checking his sidearm’s slide. "They can't get in through the hatch. But Jonathan didn't die. Men like him don't die that easily."
Suddenly, the secondary emergency transmitter on the desk crackled to life. It wasn't Jonathan Vance this time. It was the voice of Michael Kane, Vincent’s trusted head of security on the surface.
"Boss! Vincent, do you copy?!" Kane’s voice was distorted by heavy static and the distinct sound of automatic gunfire in the background.
Vincent snatched the handheld transceiver. "Kane. Status. What is happening up there?"
"All hell is breaking loose downtown!" Kane shouted over the deafening rattle of a mounted machine gun. "Multiple assault teams hit the Moretti Tower ten minutes ago! They have surface-to-air coverage over the Loop. They've shut down the city's power grid—half of Cook County is completely blacked out! The Mayor has declared a state of emergency, but CPD dispatch is compromised. They're trying to burn the empire to the ground from the outside!"
Emma stepped closer to the radio, her face pale. "They're trying to force us out by destroying everything else."
"Kane," Vincent ordered, his voice icy and controlled. "Where is my grandmother? Where is Elena?"
A brief, terrifying pause hung over the radio. When Kane spoke again, his breath was ragged. "The private residence in Gold Coast was targeted first, boss. We repelled the initial breach, but Mrs. Moretti... she refused to evacuate to the bunker without you. She's holding the estate with twelve loyal men. They're surrounded."
Vincent’s jaw tightened until the muscles in his cheek twitching like taut steel wires. Elena Moretti was the matriarch who had raised him after his father’s murder, the woman whose honor Emma Ward had defended with her bare hands at that fateful gala weeks ago.
"Listen to me, Kane," Vincent said, every word clipped and lethal. "Activate Protocol Omega. Blow the eastern retaining wall of the subterranean vault. We are coming up through the auxiliary rail tunnel under Michigan Avenue. Be there with the convoy."
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"Understood, boss. Godspeed."
Vincent dropped the radio, turned to Emma, and pulled a tactical shotgun and two spare magazines from the vault’s armory locker. "The war isn't down here anymore, Emma. It’s on the streets."
