CHAPTER 13: Burning the Empire
“Evelyn, what are you doing?” my father asked, taking a step forward.
“I am finishing what Arthur started,” I replied.
I typed in the command code to execute a permanent wipe script. A prompt flashed on the screen:
WARNING: PERMANENT DESTRUCTION OF AEGIS CORE PROTOCOL. THIS ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE. PROCEED? (Y/N)
“If you delete this,” my father said gently, “the Laurent family loses its ultimate financial advantage. We will just be a normal investment firm.”
“Good,” I said. “We don’t need a ghost to build our future.”
I looked at Adrian. “And you... you will face the law for your crimes. You will answer for the embezzlement, you will answer for the abuse, and you will pay every cent back to the investors you misled.”
Adrian nodded slowly, looking down at his hands. The arrogance that had defined him for three years was completely gone. “I know.”
I turned back to the terminal and pressed Y, then slammed down the ENTER key.
May you like
A bar flared across the screen as line after line of self-replicating code began destroying the algorithm from the inside out. Within sixty seconds, twenty years of secret corporate warfare dissolved into digital static.
Project Aegis was gone.
