Chapter 7 - The Combusting Crown
Gregory’s smile froze mid-sentence, his eyes widening into saucers of sheer incomprehension as he saw Noah Bennett walking at my side.
"Scarlet?" Gregory stammered through the PA system, his amplified voice echoing awkwardly over the mounting drone of the generators.
"What... what is the meaning of this disruption? We are in the middle of a federal demonstration!"
"Cut the power, Gregory," I commanded, my voice carrying clearly through the microphone I took from a stunned audio technician in the aisle.
The giant screen behind the stage began flashing yellow hazard warnings:
THERMAL WARNING: CORE TEMPERATURE 480°C — SYSTEM EXCEEDING TOLERANCE.
"Don't touch that switch!" Gregory snarled to his operators, panic bleeding through his polished veneer.
"Override the safety sensors! She’s trying to sabotage the demonstration because her board is resisting our merger terms!"
Noah stepped onto the stage, moving with calm, terrifying precision toward the main electrical terminal.
Ashford’s private security guards rushed to intercept him, but two uniformed state police colonels—accompanied by Paul Vance holding a federal search warrant—stepped directly into their path.
"Federal marshals, stand down!" the colonel ordered, pinning Ashford's security detail against the stage rigging.
Noah reached the terminal, pulling a wireless diagnostic probe from his pocket and snapping it into the primary intake bus.
He tapped the screen of his handheld tablet, connecting it instantly to the auditorium's sixty-foot presentation display.
The corporate Ashford graphic vanished, replaced by a real-time thermal infrared map of the regulator’s interior chamber.
The copper cooling coils were glowing bright, blinding white, on the verge of total catastrophic meltdown.
"The bypass line you illegally tapped into the municipal grid at seven this morning has just been disconnected by the city utility commission, Gregory," Noah announced into the stage microphone, his baritone booming across the auditorium.
"Your machine has six seconds before the secondary insulator vaporizes."
"You're lying! Shut it off! Shut it down!" Gregory screamed, lunging toward the emergency kill switch on the console.
Before he could reach the lever, a deafening CRACK like a rifle shot shattered the glass casing of the regulator unit.
Thick, acrid black smoke poured from the ventilation vents, followed by a violent shower of orange electrical sparks that rained down across the stage carpet.
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The main monitors flickered violently, died, and plunged the entire convention center into an eerie, emergency-lit twilight.
Five hundred investors and federal officials scrambled out of their chairs in utter chaos, coughing through the chemical smoke as fire alarms began their shrill, mechanical howling throughout the hall.
