Chapter 16 - The Digital Snare
Jasper stared at the black, hollow barrel of the suppressed pistol, the reality of the corporate underworld crashing down upon him. He had been a fool. Men who operated in the absolute dark didn't leave five-million-dollar loose ends walking around Europe. They tied them off permanently.
"You used my codes," Jasper said, keeping his voice dead level, fighting the paralyzing surge of panic. "But you don't understand what you just unlocked."
"I understand perfectly," the man in the topcoat sneered, adjusting his grip on the weapon. "You opened the backdoor to Sterling Enterprises. The automated drain sequence is already initiating. You are no longer required."
"Look at the screen," Jasper commanded softly, not breaking eye contact with the assassin.
The man hesitated, his eyes darting to the primary monitor. The brilliant blue screen, which had signaled a successful breach just seconds ago, was now flashing violently with heavy red static. The automated download sequence had completely frozen at zero percent.
Suddenly, a chat box forcibly opened in the center of the terminal. A single line of text appeared, typed in real-time by an unseen observer.
> DID YOU REALLY THINK I WOULDN'T MONITOR THE GHOST PROTOCOLS, JASPER?
The man in the topcoat paled. "What is this? What did you do?"
"I didn't do it," Jasper said, a grim sense of awe washing over him. "Victoria did. She didn't update the architecture because she knew I was the only one who could breach it. She left the backdoor open on purpose. It wasn't a flaw in her security. It was a digital bear trap. And we just stepped right into it."
> TRACING IP... the chat box rapidly updated. > MOBILE UPLINK DETECTED. ENGAGING COUNTER-MEASURES.
The heavy sedan violently lurched forward as the car's electronic control unit was hijacked. The dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree, warning sirens blaring inside the cabin. The digital locks on the doors engaged with a heavy, unyielding clack. The driver desperately stomped on the brakes, but the pedal went completely soft. Victoria's head of cyber-security had remote-accessed the vehicle's drive-by-wire system through the uplink.
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"Shoot the terminal!" the driver screamed in panic as the steering wheel violently jerked to the left, completely out of his control.
The man in the topcoat swung the pistol toward the monitors, but Jasper didn't wait. He lunged forward in the confined space of the backseat, grabbing the assassin’s wrist just as the gun discharged.
