Chapter 58 - The Ghost Revealed
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The VIP room filled with blinding, choking white smoke in an instant.
The panicked buyers began firing blindly into the haze. Bullets shattered the expensive windows and tore through the drywall.
"Get down!" Elias yelled, tackling me to the floor as a stray round clipped his shoulder, spraying a mist of blood onto my emerald dress.
I coughed through the thick smoke, drawing my hidden derringer from my thigh holster. I crawled rapidly toward the master terminal. I reached up and blindly grabbed the USB port. The drive was gone. The waiter had downloaded a copy of the algorithm and vanished into the chaos.
"He took the drive!" I shouted over the gunfire. "Lock down the penthouse!"
"The elevator shafts are overridden!" Jax yelled over the comms, his voice frantic. "He's taking the maintenance zipline from the balcony to the adjacent hotel tower! He's getting away!"
"No, he isn't," I snarled, pushing myself up.
I bolted through the smoke, ignoring the crossfire, and kicked open the glass doors leading to the penthouse balcony. The heavy, humid Macao wind whipped my hair around my face.
I saw him. The waiter was attaching a specialized climbing harness to a heavy steel cable that stretched across the dizzying drop to the roof of the neighboring casino.
"Stop right there!" I commanded, aiming my pistol directly at his back.
The man paused. He slowly turned around, the red emergency lights illuminating his face. He reached up and pulled away a thin, silicone mask, revealing a sharp, striking Asian face with cold, obsidian eyes.
"You set a clever trap, Sovereign," the man said, his voice the exact deep, metallic tone I had heard on the phone. The Ghost. "But you underestimated my reach."
"Drop the drive," I warned, stepping closer, my finger tightening on the trigger. "Or I drop you."
The Ghost simply smiled. "You don't understand, Emily. I didn't come here to steal the algorithm."
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"Then what did you do?"
"I came to deliver a virus," he whispered. "By plugging my drive into your network, I just corrupted the European Syndicate's master banking ledgers. Your empire is currently deleting itself."
