Chapter 33 - The Final Confrontation
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Madison leaned out from behind the server rack, firing two rounds that shattered the terminal screen directly beside Victor's head.
Victor cried out, shielding his eyes as glass splinters sprayed across his face. He stumbled back against the main mainframe column, dropping his weapon onto the floor.
Madison moved in fast, closing the distance between them in three long strides. She kicked his dropped pistol across the floor, grabbed Victor by the lapels of his black coat, and slammed him hard against the humming server rack.
"Stop the upload!" Madison growled, pressing the barrel of her P320 under his chin.
Victor sneered, blood trickling down his cheek from a glass cut, but his eyes held no fear.
"It's an automated sequence, Commander," Victor gasped out, a terrible smile spreading across his face. "Once it passes eighty percent, it cannot be aborted from this console. The Architect network is self-sustaining!"
GLOBAL BROADCAST INITIATION: 96% COMPLETE.
Madison looked up at the wall monitor. The red bar was seconds away from completing the full cycle.
Suddenly, the server rack beside them began to spark violently. Green lines of code overwrote the red progress bar on the giant wall monitor, freezing the broadcast at 99%.
Across the master terminal screen, a familiar yellow icon popped up—a stylized logo of a soaring drone.
A small text window opened on the screen:
REMOTE OVERRIDE ENGAGED BY: ETHAN_CARTER_LOCAL_HOST.
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"What?" Victor gasped, staring at the screen in utter disbelief. "How? He's outside the vault!"
"Ethan didn't just build a key, Victor," Madison whispered into Victor's ear, a cold smile touching her lips. "He built a backdoor."
