The echoes in the static.

Chapter 14: The Override Key

The barrel of the gun was steady, pointing straight at Elias's heart.

Outside, a bolt of lightning flashed across the dark harbor, illuminating the lantern room in a brief, stark white glare. Rain lashed violently against the glass dome.

"You won't shoot me, Arthur," Elias said, keeping his eyes locked on his uncle. "If you kill me, the drive in my hand triggers a dead-man's release to every news outlet in the state."

Arthur’s eyes narrowed slightly, a fraction of a second's doubt flickering across his face.

That second was all Elias needed.

Elias feigned a step to the left, then lunged forward, slamming his shoulder into Arthur's arm. The gun went off with a deafening crack, the bullet shattering a glass panel overhead. They crashed into the central control desk, knocking over monitors and sending cables flying.

Arthur fought with surprising strength, but Elias managed to twist his uncle's wrist, forcing him to drop the weapon. The gun slid across the slick floor, falling through an open floor grate down into the dark abyss of the server tower below.

Arthur collapsed back against the wall, breathless and clutching his wrist.

Elias didn't waste a second. He turned to the master console, jammed Riley’s drive directly into the primary maintenance port, and pulled up the system command line.

*“AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM PURGE,”* the screen flashed red.

Elias needed the master encryption key—a string of code only Arthur knew. He looked back at his uncle, who was watching him with a cold, triumphant glare.

"You don't have the key, Elias," Arthur wheezed. "It's encrypted with my personal biometric hash. You can't override it."

Elias looked at the terminal prompt, then down at the drive Riley had given him. Riley hadn't just copied the coordinates—she had written a brute-force decryption worm specifically tailored for Arthur's hardware signatures.

"I don't need your key," Elias said, hitting the enter key. "Riley built her own."