Page 91 of Duty Compromised

“Charlotte,” Ty whispered.

That was my signal.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, initiating the stabilizer code deployment sequence. Lines of code flashed across the screen as the program went live, reaching out through quantum entanglement to find its target. The Cascade Protocol might be in a warehouse two hundred meters away, but at the quantum level, distance was meaningless.

The progress bar began its crawl across my screen. Ten percent. Twenty.

Come on, come on…

Thirty percent. Forty.

Through the comms, I heard Ethan continuing his performance, discussing payment methods and keeping the sellers focused on him rather than the device that was being fundamentally altered at the quantum level.

Fifty percent. Sixty.

My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. Everything we’d worked for, everything we’d sacrificed, came down to these moments.

Seventy. Eighty.

“Mr. Volkov, the payment confirmation should be—” the seller started.

Ninety.

“Momentarily,” Ethan assured him. “Large transfers take time to?—”

One hundred percent.

The screen flashed green. STABILIZER CODE DEPLOYED. QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT LOCKED. FREQUENCY PATTERNS ALIGNED.

It was done. The Cascade Protocol was neutralized.

“Deployment complete.” I managed to keep my voice from shaking as I said it.

“Roger,” Ty whispered.

Relief flooded through me so intensely my hands shook. We’d done it. The weapon that could have killed millions was now nothing more than an expensive paperweight. I started to turn toward the door, wanting to make sure Donovan had heard me.

And honestly, just wanting assurance from him off comms that everything was going to be okay. I slid the communication unit off my head and set it on the desk.

Then I froze as I heard a voice from the hallway, muffled but recognizable. A voice that shouldn’t be here, couldn’t be here.

“Please don’t shoot me. Please! You’re Donovan, right? I’m Darcy Giglio from Vertex! I have critical information about the Cascade Protocol—there’s a fail-safe Charlotte doesn’t know about!”

Darcy? Here? What fail-safe? Oh my God, had I missed something? She must have found some critical detail I’d missed. If there was a fail-safe I didn’t know about, we needed that information immediately.

“Darcy?” I called out, already moving toward the door. “What are you doing here?”

I rushed into the hallway, ready to tell Donovan not to hurt her, that she was a friend, that she was here to help?—

The world tilted.

Donovan was on the floor, crumpled against the wall like a discarded doll. Blood pooled beneath his head, dark and spreading across the dirty concrete. Two armed men flanked Darcy, and one was wiping blood off the butt of his gun with casual ease.

For one crystallizing second, my brain tried to make sense of what I was seeing. They’d taken Darcy hostage. They’d forced her to call out to me. They’d?—

But no.

Darcy stood between the armed men comfortably, no restraints, no fear in her posture. Her expression as she looked at me wasn’t scared or desperate.