Chapter 12 - Broadcast of Defiance
""Rip it off and toss it in the kerosene,"" Clara ordered.
Lily tore the pouch from her neck and dropped it into a bucket of waste oil, but the damage was already done. Outside, the low hum of drone rotors buzzed like angry hornets against the sheet metal of the boxcar. Spotlights suddenly pierced through the rusted ventilation slits, crisscrossing the dark interior in blazing shafts of white light.
A voice blasted through a high-powered megaphone outside: ""Clara Evans! Exit the vehicle with the minors! Vanguard holds full legal custody under the emergency guardianship doctrine signed by their mother!""
""Guardianship?"" Lily gasped. ""Mama would never sign that!""
""She signed it under duress, thinking it would keep you out of state foster homes,"" Clara sneered, typing frantically on the keyboard. ""This drive Miller gave you contains the raw server data—every fake video, every generated crisis they created to build influencer children from scratch. If this gets uploaded to the open federal repository, Vanguard dissolves overnight.""
""Can you upload it?"" Lily asked, holding onto Mia as the railcar trembled under the weight of approaching tactical vehicles.
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""The local towers are jammed,"" Clara replied, sweat beading on her forehead. ""I can't push a single kilobyte from inside this yard. We need a direct microwave uplink, and the only transmitter powerful enough within twenty miles is sitting on the roof of the local broadcast tower two blocks away.""
A tear gas canister smashed through the railcar’s wooden wall, hissing noxious white smoke into the confined space. Clara threw gas masks to the girls. ""Time to fight back, Lily. Grab Mia. We go through the floor.""
