Chapter 34 - Brother Against Brother
The sound of the cutting torch outside took on a deeper, more horrific pitch—a hollow, groaning whistle that meant the flame had breached the outer layer of the titanium laminate.
"Arthur, I’m not leaving you here to die," I said, my voice breaking.
"You aren't leaving me to die, boy," Arthur snapped, his fingers digging into my arm with terrifying intensity. "You’re leaving me to do the only thing I was ever really good at. Killing the competition."
He shoved me toward the ladder. "Climb! Now!"
I grabbed the cold iron rungs. My boots found purchase, and I began hauling myself up into the vertical darkness of the drainage pipe. The air was foul with centuries of damp rot and lime runoff. Below me, Arthur watched until my legs disappeared into the shaft, then he turned back toward the main chamber, drawing his second sidearm from behind his back.
Ten feet up, I paused, peering through an open ventilation grate that looked down upon the command platform.
With a catastrophic crash, the central core of the vault door fell inward, glowing cherry-red and smoking furiously. A cloud of superheated nitrogen and vaporized oil rolled across the floor.
Through the ragged, glowing breach stepped Director Sterling Vance. He held a high-caliber pistol at low-ready, his spectacles gleaming in the flash of the strobe lights. Operatives in tactical gear fanned out behind him, weapons scanning the corners.
"Arthur," Sterling called out, his voice echoing off the curved walls. "Come out, little brother. It’s over. Give me the boy, and I’ll have our medical bird fly you to Walter Reed. We can fix the lung."
From the shadows behind the towering mainframe, Arthur stepped into view. He was leaning heavily against a steel stanchion, his weapon hanging loosely at his side.
"You were always a terrible liar, Sterling," Arthur said softly. "You didn't bring a medevac. You brought a shovel."
Sterling stopped twenty feet away, looking at his brother with a mixture of disgust and cold fascination. "Where is the cipher? Where is Mark?"
"He's gone, Sterling," Arthur chuckled, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. "He’s outside the wire. And he knows everything."
Sterling’s expression hardened from bureaucratic amusement into pure, serpentine malice. "Then you are no longer an asset, Arthur. You’re simply an administrative expense."
Sterling raised his pistol.
Arthur didn't try to lift his gun. Instead, his left hand came out of his coat pocket, holding an old military-grade flare igniter.
"Say hello to Dad," Arthur whispered.
He struck the striker.
May you like
Down in the sump basin beneath the floorboards, twenty gallons of aviation kerosene—stored for the emergency backup generators—ignited in a single, colossal roar. A wall of orange fire washed over the platform, consuming both brothers in an inferno of boiling heat and shattered glass.
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