Chapter 12
Chapter 12:
She hadn’t taken it. She had walked away with Elias.
Now, sitting in a car owned by a company she secretly controlled, Aurora deleted the file. She didn’t need the document to know she was free. She felt it in the way her lungs expanded fully, hitting ribs that no longer felt like cage bars.
“Miller,” she said, her eyes scanning lines of code streaming across her terminal.
“Yeah p>
“Stop by a hardware store. I need a soldering iron and a new motherboard p>
Miller looked at her in the rearview mirror. He didn’t ask why a woman in a thrift store blouse needed industrial electronics.
“You got it p>
Aurora typed a command. The “Phoenix” protocol initiated on the Pulse servers.
Sterling Thorne believed she was destitute. He believed she was currently crying in a subway station, regretting the loss of his credit card.
She hit Enter.
Let him believe it. The crash is always more violent when you don’t see the wall coming.
The lobby of Pulse Interactive looked less like a corporate headquarters and more like a dormitory after finals week. Pizza boxes were stacked in precarious towers on the reception desk, and the air smelled of stale coffee and ozone.
The receptionist, a young girl with purple streaks in her hair, didn’t look up from her phone when Aurora walked in.
“Deliveries in the back,” the girl mumbled, popping a bubble of gum.
Aurora didn’t stop. She walked past the desk, past the security turnstile. She pulled a plain white keycard from her pocket—one Victor had couriered to her grandfather’s apartment the night before—and tapped it against the sensor.
Read the newest chapters gⱯlnσν𝓮ℓs․cøm
Beep. Green light.
The receptionist dropped her phone. “Hey! You can’t go in there p>
Aurora pushed through the double doors into the main development floor.
It was chaos.
Dozens of developers were shouting over the hum of cooling fans. Monitors flashed red with error messages. In the center of the room, a man with disheveled hair was pulling at his own scalp.
Liam Smith. Lead Developer. He looked like he hadn’t slept since the release of the first iPhone.
“The rendering engine is crashing!” someone yelled from the back.
“We’re losing the framerate on the water physics p>
“Cut the water!” Liam screamed back. “Just make it a desert level p>
“We can’t change the build two days before the patch p>
Aurora stepped into the center of the room. She was wearing her worn black slacks and the white blouse, looking utterly out of place in the sea of graphic tees and hoodies.
“Silence,” she said.
She didn’t shout. She didn’t have to. The tone of her voice was a frequency that cut through the noise like a diamond cutter through glass.
The room didn’t go silent immediately. A few heads turned. Some snickered.