Chapter 13 - The Mid-Air Interrogation
At thirty-five thousand feet, the Gulfstream leveled off into the smooth, pitch-black silence above the storm clouds. The cabin’s ambient recessed lighting hummed softly, casting long shadows across the cream upholstery. Elena lay strapped into a lie-flat executive chair in the mid-cabin, where Miller had applied a field dressing and an emergency clotting pack to her side. She was pale, but her breathing had evened out.
Lucas sat across from her, wrapped in a blanket, sipping water from a plastic bottle that Julian held for his trembling hands. ""They kept me under for weeks at a time,"" Lucas whispered, his voice hoarse, his gaze never leaving Julian’s face as if convinced his older brother was a hallucination. ""Every time they woke me up, they ran diagnostic pulses through my spine. It felt like liquid fire in my bones, Julian. Father stood right there in the room, taking notes like he was auditing an invoice.""
Across the aisle, Arthur Vance sat bound to a captain's chair with heavy cargo straps, a bloody split lip marring his aristocratic face. Despite his confinement, a smug, arrogant smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. ""Go ahead, Lucas,"" Arthur sneered softly. ""Tell him the rest. Tell him what happens when that clock hits zero.""
Julian stepped over, his navy henley stained with grease, blood, and melting snow. He towered over his father, the timid accountant completely eradicated from his eyes. ""What clock, Arthur?""
""The Reykjavik terminal was never an extraction point,"" Arthur said, chuckling with cold satisfaction. ""It’s a broadcast relay station. The moment this plane crossed the sixty-degree latitude line, the autonomous sequence in Lucas's cervical implant initialized. In forty minutes, the transmission will broadcast an irreversible wipe command to the central clearing houses in Frankfurt, London, and New York. Trillions in sovereign debt will simply vanish.""
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Julian felt a cold dread settle in his stomach. ""Why? Why destroy the financial architecture you spent fifty years exploiting?""
""Because if I cannot control the ledger,"" Arthur hissed, his blue eyes flashing with pure megalomania, ""no one will. The board tried to cut me out. They thought they could use my boys against me! But they forgot that I designed the vault. And the only way to stop the broadcast is to physically sever the C3 vertebrae from his neck.""
