Chapter 78

POV: Isabella

The port of Reykjavik didn't look like a sanctuary. It looked like the end of the world. Sharp, volcanic rock met a sea the color of bruised slate, and the air carried a chill that didn't just bite—it felt like it was trying to hollow you out from the inside.

Liam held my hand as we stepped off the freighter's gangway. The dock was empty, save for a single, silver car idling near a stack of rusted shipping containers. There were no customs officials. No police. Just the low, haunting moan of the wind through the harbor cables.

"The manifest said they were expecting us," Liam said, his voice tight. He hadn't let go of the tablet. "But 'Reykjavik Control' isn't a person. It’s an automated relay."

"My father’s voice, Liam," I whispered. "I know it. I lived with it in my head for years. That wasn't a recording. The inflection... it responded to the ship’s call sign."

"We’ll find out," he said.

We walked toward the car. The door opened automatically. There was no driver. The interior smelled of clean linen and cold air. As soon as we sat down, a screen on the dashboard flickered to life. It didn't show a map. It showed a waveform—a steady, pulsing line that mirrored the rhythm of a resting heart.

"Welcome home, Isabella," the car's speakers said. It was the voice again. Julian Vane. "And welcome, Liam. I’m glad to see the Sterling stubbornness hasn't faded with the fortune."

"Where are you?" I asked the dashboard, my voice trembling.

"I am exactly where I promised I would be," the voice replied. "At the end of the line. The car is programmed for the Hellisheiði facility. We have much to discuss before the forty-eight-hour window closes."

The car began to move, gliding silently away from the harbor and toward the steaming, geothermal fields of the interior. I watched the landscape shift from industrial grit to a lunar expanse of moss-covered lava. It was beautiful and terrifying, a place where the earth’s heat was the only thing keeping the ice at bay.

"It’s an AI, Isabella," Liam said, his eyes fixed on the waveform. "A sophisticated one, likely built on his neural scans before he died. It’s the 'ghost' I saw in the code."

"Is it him?" I asked. "Or is it just a mirror?"

"Does it matter?" Liam asked. "If it has the keys to the trust and the medical bypass, it’s the only Julian Vane that matters now."

We reached the facility an hour later. It wasn't a towering spire like the one in Manhattan. It was a low, glass-and-concrete structure built into the side of a volcanic ridge. Steam rose from the ground around it, shrouding the building in a white mist that made it look like a mirage.

The doors opened as we approached. Inside, the air was warm and hummed with the sound of a thousand cooling fans. It was a server farm, but it didn't feel cold or mechanical. The walls were lined with living moss, and the light was soft and amber.

In the center of the main atrium stood a man.

He wasn't a hologram. He wasn't a ghost. He was young—no older than Liam—with a shock of dark hair and a tired, knowing smile. He was wearing a simple grey sweater and jeans.

"Arthur Vance," Liam said, stepping forward.

"The one and only," the man said. He didn't offer a hand. He looked at us with a strange kind of pity. "I’ve been watching your progress since the bridge, Liam. You’ve been very loud."

"Where is he?" I asked, looking around the empty hall. "Where is the voice?"

Arthur pointed to the floor-to-ceiling server racks that hummed behind the glass walls. "He’s everywhere in here, Isabella. Julian Vane didn't want to live forever. He wanted to ensure that the truth couldn't be deleted. He knew Eleanor would try to turn his work into a weapon, so he turned himself into the shield."

"He's the ghost cloud," I said.

"He's the administrator," Arthur corrected. "I’m just the gardener. I keep the power on and the cooling lines clear. But the decisions? Those belong to the archive."

Arthur led us to a small, clinical room at the back of the facility. In the center was a chair—identical to the one in the Sterling morgue, but refined, polished, and lacking the brutal restraints.

"The final bypass," Arthur said, gesturing to the chair. "The Medusa core wasn't designed to be permanent, Isabella. It was a bridge. It was meant to hold your neural pathways together until your own biology could take over the load. But Eleanor... she liked the leash. She kept the shunt active because it gave her a back door into your mind."

"Can you remove it?" Liam asked.

"I can finalize the integration," Arthur said. "It won't be a removal. It’ll be a fusion. The tech will become part of your nervous system—inert, silent, and completely under your control. No cloud. No mother. No back door. Just you."

I looked at the chair. This was the moment. The end of the war between my body and the machine.

"What's the catch?" Liam asked, his hand tightening on my shoulder. "There’s always a cost with the Vanes."

Arthur looked at Liam. "The cost is the data. To fuse the system, we have to flush the archive. The Julian Vane AI, the ghost cloud, the proof of the merger... all of it has to be used as a power source for the fusion. Once Isabella is whole, the voice goes silent. For good."

I felt a pang of grief so sharp it took my breath away. "I’d be killing him. Again."

"You’d be setting him free," Arthur said. "He’s been a prisoner in these racks for years, waiting for you to get here. He doesn't want to be a program, Isabella. He wants to be a father who did one good thing."

I walked to the chair. I sat down, the cool leather feeling like a promise. Liam knelt beside me, his eyes dark with a mixture of fear and hope.

"You don't have to do this," he said. "We can find another way. We have the money. We can go to a dozen different specialists."

"There is no other way, Liam," I said. "I can feel the clock. The coldness in my chest... it’s not just the shunt dying. It’s me."

I looked at the screen above the chair. The waveform appeared again.

"Isabella," the voice whispered. "I am proud of you. Not for the data you carried, but for the person you became while you were carrying it. You are the only part of me that was ever truly worth saving."

"I love you, Dad," I said.

"Then let's finish the bridge," the voice said.

Arthur stepped to the terminal. "This will be a total blackout. Liam, you need to hold her. The feedback will be intense."

Liam wrapped his arms around me, his chest a solid, warm wall against my back. I closed my eyes.

"Do it," I said.

Arthur hit the key.

The world didn't explode. It vanished. I felt a surge of white-hot energy pour into my spine, a roar of a billion voices screaming at once—every memory, every line of code, every secret of the Vane-Sterling empire rushing through me like a tidal wave.

I saw the bridge. I saw the night in the rain. I saw Liam’s face in the courtroom. And then, I saw my father, standing in a garden I didn't recognize, waving goodbye.

And then, there was nothing.

The hum died. The light died. The air in my lungs stopped moving.

I was in a void, a place without data or sound. I waited for the fear to take me, for the silence to become a grave.

But then, I felt a beat.

Thump.

And another.

Thump.

It was my heart. It was loud. It was heavy. And it was mine.

I opened my eyes. The room was dark, the server racks behind the glass silent and unlit. The amber glow was gone. The only light came from the moon reflecting off the snow outside the window.

"Isabella?" Liam’s voice was a ragged whisper.

I looked at him. I could see the tears track down his face. I could feel the texture of his sweater against my cheek. I could smell the salt on his skin.

"I'm here," I said. My voice was clear. It didn't vibrate. It didn't echo.

I reached back and touched the base of my skull. The skin was smooth. The metal port was gone, replaced by a thin, faint scar.

"He's gone," I said, looking at the dark servers. "The ghost is gone."

"But you’re here," Liam said, pulling me into his lap, holding me as if I might dissolve if he let go.

The cliffhanger wasn't the silence. It was the sound of a door opening at the far end of the atrium.

Arthur Vance was standing there, but he wasn't looking at us. He was looking at his own tablet, his face pale in the moonlight.

"We have to go," Arthur said. "The fusion created a signature that the satellite network picked up. Eleanor’s 'Collection' team didn't come to Iceland. But the people who bought the Vane debt did."

"Who?" Liam asked, standing up and helping me to my feet.

"The Sterling Pension Board," Arthur said. "They don't want the data anymore, Liam. They want the three billion dollars. And they know that with the AI gone, you’re the only person left with the routing codes."

I looked at Liam. We were in a glass house on a volcanic ridge, and the world was coming to collect its due.