Chapter 26

Liam's POV 

Resonance is a beautiful way to die.

In the boardroom, the vibration would be a hum you felt in your teeth before it became a roar that tore your cells apart. I knew the math. I had designed the safety protocols for the Medusa core, and I knew exactly how long a steel-reinforced floor could hold against a localized sonic assault.

One hundred and eighty seconds.

I looked at Isabella. She was staring at the monitor, at the woman who was her own mirror image. Her hand was gripped tight around that glass slide. She looked like she was witnessing the birth of a nightmare.

"Isabella, focus," I said. I had to be the structure. I had to be the wall. "We have to move."

The cellar door was gone. The dust from the blast swirled in the beam of my flashlight. Two shapes moved in the haze—Vane tactical. They weren't using flashbangs. They were using gas.

"Masks," I snapped, pulling a respirator from my inner pocket. I had prepared for a chemical breach since the moment we left the penthouse.

I shoved the mask over Isabella’s face. She didn't fight me. She was passive, her mind still trapped in the serial number on that slide.

"Liam, the tower," she muffled through the mask.

"I can't save the tower from a basement in Queens. I can only save you."

"The board—"

"The board is a line item, Isabella! You are the source!"

I grabbed a heavy iron pipe from a rack of plumbing supplies. I wasn't a fighter, but I was a man who understood leverage. As the first guard stepped through the ruined door, I didn't aim for his head. I aimed for his knee.

The crack of bone echoed in the small space. The guard went down. I stepped over him, grabbing his sidearm—a standard-issue Vane tranquilizer pistol.

"Go!" I shoved Isabella toward the secondary exit, a coal chute that led to the side alley.

We scrambled up the narrow, blackened tunnel. The soot filled my lungs, mixing with the taste of blood. We burst out into the alley, the cold rain hitting us like a shock.

The woman in the grey dress was gone. The black sedan was idling at the end of the block.

"Isabella, the car!"

"No," she said, pulling back. "It’s a trap."

"It’s our only way out of the perimeter. Look."

The street was being sealed. Not by police, but by unmarked black SUVs. Arthur’s final sweep. He was burning the city to find his patent.

"The tower," Isabella said, her voice growing stronger. "Liam, the emitter in the boardroom is linked to the Jersey house. If I can't stop it from here, I can stop it from the car. It has a high-gain antenna."

I looked at the sedan. I looked at the SUVs closing in.

"Get in," I said.

We ran. My shoulder felt like it was being branded with a hot iron. Every step was a blur of grey rain and black asphalt. We reached the sedan just as the first SUV rounded the corner.

The door opened from the inside.

"Get in, Liam," a voice said.

It wasn't Eleanor. It wasn't the woman in grey.

It was Felix.

"Felix?" I climbed into the back, pulling Isabella in behind me. "How did you find us?"

"I never lost you," Felix said. He was already floor-boarding the accelerator. The sedan roared, the tires screaming on the wet pavement. "I have a tracker on the core logic, Liam. I’ve had it since the island."

"You work for my mother," Isabella said, her voice flat.

Felix didn't look back in the rearview mirror. "I work for the legacy, Isabella. There’s a difference."

"The tower, Felix," I barked. "Can we override the emitter from here?"

"The frequency is locked. Eleanor has the primary. The only way to stop the collapse is to provide a counter-resonance."

"A counter-resonance from where?"

"From the source," Felix said. He looked at Isabella in the mirror. "We need your voice, Isabella. The Medusa core isn't just blood. It’s a vocal key. A specific frequency in your vocal cords that was mapped before you could even speak."

Isabella looked at the glass slide in her hand. "Subject 0."

"Eleanor didn't build you," Felix said. "She harvested you. You were the only survivor of the first Medusa trial. The woman you saw on the screen... she’s the one who stayed behind to let you go."

"My mother," Isabella whispered.

"The real Eleanor Vane," Felix said. "The woman in Jersey is an impostor. A high-level corporate spy who took the name and the life after the fire."

The car swerved as a Vane SUV rammed our rear bumper. The metal groaned.

"Sixty seconds to floor collapse," Felix said. "Isabella, the tablet. Now."

He handed a device into the backseat. It was a Sterling interface, glowing with a complex wave-form.

"I don't know the key," Isabella said.

"You don't need to know it," I said, leaning over her. "You just need to feel it. The island. The lighthouse. The way the air felt before the explosion."

"Liam, I can't."

"You have to. If you don't, Sterling Tower falls, and Arthur takes the city."

I grabbed her hand. My fingers were covered in soot and blood, but I held her with everything I had left.

"Isabella, look at me. Ignore the math. Ignore the variables. Just... scream."

She looked at me. Her eyes were wide, filled with a sudden, terrifying clarity. She gripped the tablet.

"The board," she said. "If I do this, they’ll know what I am."

"I’ll protect you," I said. "I’ll build a new world. Just stop the collapse."

Isabella opened her mouth.

It wasn't a scream. It was a hum. A low, haunting vibration that seemed to resonate through the very frame of the car. The tablet’s waveform began to spike, turning from red to a brilliant, blinding blue.

On the dashboard, the news feed from the tower showed the 48th floor. The steel was glowing. Sarah was screaming.

Then, the hum intensified.

The waveform on the tablet stabilized.

Override Accepted.

The vibration in the car stopped. On the screen, the glowing steel in the tower began to fade. The collapse had been halted.

"We did it," I breathed.

"No," Felix said. He was looking at the GPS. "We just gave Eleanor our location. She has the counter-frequency now. She has everything she needs to complete the upload."

The car's engine sputtered. The lights on the dashboard died.

"What happened?" I asked.

"A remote kill-switch," Felix said. He looked at the window.

The black sedan slowed to a crawl in the middle of the Queensboro Bridge. Below us, the dark water of the East River churned.

A helicopter hummed overhead, its spotlight pinning us to the asphalt.

My phone buzzed. A new message.

One minute to the second purge, Liam. Choose the company or the girl.

I looked at the tablet. A new countdown had started.

Medusa Core: Global Upload Initiated. 00:59.

"Felix, the bypass!" I shouted.

"There is no bypass, Liam," Felix said. He turned around, and I saw the silver emitter in his hand. "Eleanor wants her property back."

The door on Isabella’s side clicked open.

"Liam," she whispered.

I reached for her, but the air in the car suddenly vibrated. My muscles seized. My vision blurred.

"Isabella!"

The last thing I saw was Isabella being pulled from the car by a shadowed figure in a white coat.

Then, the bridge exploded.