Chapter 12 - The Apex
Sarah scooped Leo up into her arms, running through the shattered blast door toward the private staircase leading to the penthouse.
"Stay with me, kid," she pleaded, tears cutting tracks through the soot on her cheeks. "Stay with me!"
"I'm fine," Leo rasped, his eyes barely open. "The top floor... the main transmitter... he’s going to upload his own mind to the orbital network..."
Sarah burst through the doors of the penthouse. The vast, glass-walled room was flooded with the pale light of the moon. Outside, the pitch-black city stretched to the horizon, a dead metropolis waiting for dawn.
In the center of the room stood Victor Vance, wearing a sleek neural interface harness connected to a massive satellite dish mounting on the outdoor helipad.
"You're too late, Sarah," Vance said, turning to face them with a cold, terrifying smile. "The transmission is already ninety percent complete. My physical body may die here, but my consciousness will exist across every military satellite in orbit."
Sarah raised her gun, aiming straight for his forehead. "Not if I put a bullet in your brain first."
She pulled the trigger.
CLICK.
A dry misfire. The firing pin was broken, damaged from the EMP shockwaves.
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Vance smirked, pulling a sleek, pearl-handled revolver from his jacket. "Human error. Always so predictable."
He leveled the weapon directly at Sarah’s chest.
