Chapter 76

POV: Isabella

The world was no longer made of data. It was made of cold air, the sharp scent of ozone, and the terrifying, heavy weight of my own limbs. The "Hum"—that constant, electric companion that had lived in the marrow of my bones for years—was gone. In its place was a silence so absolute it felt like a physical pressure against my eardrums.

But the silence was a lie.

"The Share, Liam," my mother’s voice cut through the dark, sharp as a glass shard. "The gold foil. Place it on the table and step back, or I’ll find out exactly how much a human heart can take before it simply quits."

I blinked, my vision slowly adjusting to the beam of the flashlight. The barrel of the gun was a dark, hollow eye inches from my face. My mother stood behind it, her lab coat stark and white, her face as motionless as the steel cabinets surrounding us. She wasn't a doctor anymore. She wasn't a CEO. She was a woman who had lost her godhood and was trying to buy it back with a bullet.

Liam didn't move. I could feel the heat radiating from him, the tension in his frame a coiled spring. He was standing between me and the London guards, his hand still resting on the ruined terminal.

"You won't kill her, Eleanor," Liam said. His voice was different now—devoid of the corporate polish, stripped down to a raw, gutteral threat. "If she dies, the biometric link to the Zurich trust dies with her. You know the protocols. The lifeboat only opens for a Vane. A living Vane."

"A technicality," Eleanor hissed. "I have her DNA. I have the sequence for the neural bypass. With the Share, I can reconstruct the authorization. I don't need the girl. I need the key."

"You have nothing," I whispered.

My voice sounded strange to my own ears—husky, uneven, and small. It was a human voice.

Eleanor’s eyes shifted to me, the flashlight beam stinging my pupils. "Be quiet, Isabella. You’ve already done enough damage to your own future."

"The future is a morgue, Mother," I said, my hand finding Liam’s sleeve. I used his arm to steady myself, my legs feeling like they belonged to a stranger. "Look around you. You’re hiding in the basement of a building you no longer own, threatening the only person who actually knows how to unlock the archive. Do you really think you can shoot your way back into the boardroom?"

"I don't need the board," Eleanor said, her finger tightening on the trigger. "I need the exit. Now, Liam. The Share."

Liam reached into his pocket. He moved slowly, deliberately. He pulled out the square of gold foil, the light of the flashlight catching the embossed seal of the Sterling family.

"Here," Liam said. "Take it. But the second you touch it, the guards leave. This is between the three of us."

The two men from the London team looked at each other. They were mercenaries, not cultists. They could see the sirens flashing through the high, frosted windows of the upper floors. They knew the ship was sinking.

"Go," Eleanor snapped at them, her eyes never leaving the gold foil. "Wait at the service entrance. If the police breach the lobby, trigger the gas."

The men didn't wait for a second command. They vanished into the shadows, their footsteps retreating down the hall.

"Now," Liam said, holding the Share out over the cold steel of a mortuary table. "Come and get it."

Eleanor stepped forward, the gun still leveled at my chest. She was shaking—a tiny, microscopic tremor in her hand that would have been invisible to a machine, but was glaringly obvious to a daughter. She reached for the certificate, her fingers hovering over the gold seal.

"It’s beautiful, isn't it?" Liam asked, his voice low and conversational. "The one thing my father made that you couldn't automate. The one thing that requires a physical presence."

"It’s a tool," Eleanor said, her hand closing around the paper.

The moment her fingers touched the gold, Liam didn't lung for the gun. He didn't try to tackle her. He simply stepped back, pulling me with him into the deep shadow of the server racks.

"What are you doing?" Eleanor asked, her brow furrowing as she looked at the Share.

"The hardware key," Liam said. "It doesn't just unlock the trust, Eleanor. It’s a grounded circuit. And you’re standing on a floor that’s currently flooded with the coolant from the burst monitors."

Eleanor looked down. The floor was slick with a shimmering, blue liquid—the conductive fluid from the ancient CRT screens I had shattered during the purge.

"No," she gasped.

"The terminal isn't dead," I said, the realization hitting me. "The purge... it didn't just wipe the shunt. It turned the archive into a battery."

Liam reached out and flipped a switch on the wall—the manual override for the room’s lighting.

There was no light. There was only a massive, blinding arc of blue electricity that jumped from the terminal’s exposed wiring to the gold foil in Eleanor’s hand.

She didn't scream. The current was too fast, too efficient. The gun flew from her hand, skittering across the floor as her body seized. The Share—the gold-foil key to a billion-dollar empire—didn't melt. It acted as a lightning rod, the energy grounding through the white lab coat and the wet floor.

The arc lasted only a second, but when it died, the room was plunged back into a silence that was even deeper than before.

Eleanor slumped against the mortuary table, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. She wasn't dead, but the shock had broken her. The terminal sparked one last time and then went dark for good.

"Liam," I whispered, my heart thumping against my ribs.

"I've got you," he said.

He didn't look at Eleanor. He didn't look at the Share, which now lay charred and useless on the floor. He picked up the gun from the floor, cleared the chamber, and tossed it into a biohazard bin.

"We have to go," he said. "The guards will be back when they realize the power is out."

"Wait," I said.

I walked over to my mother. She was conscious, her eyes wide and glassy, staring at the ceiling. She looked small. She looked like a woman who had spent her life trying to become a god and had ended up as a patient in her own morgue.

"The video, Mother," I said. "The one from my father. He didn't hate you. He just knew you’d forget how to be a person. He left the money in Zurich because he knew it was the only thing you’d ever chase."

She didn't answer. Her hand twitched, reaching for the empty air where the gold foil had been.

"Goodbye, Eleanor," I said.

We turned and walked out of the archive. The hallway was filled with the smell of smoke and the distant sound of shouting. We didn't take the lift. We took the stairs, our footsteps echoing in the narrow concrete well.

We reached the service entrance just as the heavy doors were being pried open from the outside. I expected to see the London team. I expected to see the police.

Instead, I saw Marcus.

He was standing in the rain, a plain grey van idling behind him. He looked at us—at my torn dress and Liam’s bleeding hands—and he simply nodded.

"The boat is waiting in the Narrows," Marcus said. "The 'Collection' team has been... detained. The police are ten minutes behind us."

"The Share is gone, Marcus," Liam said, stepping into the rain.

"I know," Marcus said. "I saw the surge from the perimeter. I assume that was the plan?"

"It was the only way to make sure the money stayed in the trust until Isabella is ready to claim it," Liam said.

We got into the van. As we pulled away from the Sterling Medical Wing, I looked back at the white stone building. It was being surrounded by a sea of blue and red lights. The empire was being dismantled, one floor at a time.

I leaned my head against the window, the cool glass soothing the fever in my skin. The world felt different. The colors were sharper, the sounds were louder, and the air felt like it was actually reaching my lungs.

"Liam?" I asked.

"Yeah?"

"My heart," I said, taking his hand and placing it against my chest. "Can you feel it?"

Liam closed his eyes, his fingers pressing against the thin fabric of my dress. He stayed that way for a long time, his breath hitching just once before he found his composure.

"It’s the best thing I’ve ever felt," he whispered.

The van wove through the streets of Manhattan, heading for the water. We were leaving the tower, the money, and the names behind. We were heading for a boat that didn't have a destination, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of the dark.

The cliffhanger wasn't a threat from the outside. It was a discovery from the inside.

As I sat there, I felt a tiny, rhythmic tickle in the back of my mind. It wasn't the Hum. It wasn't data. It was a memory—a clear, sharp image of a girl on a bridge, looking at a man who was afraid of heights.

And for the first time, the memory didn't belong to the machine.

It belonged to me.