Chapter 14 - The Final Stand at Zero Hour
"Stop right there, Whitaker!" the commander screamed, his voice cracking with hysterical desperation as he pressed a trembling finger against the remote trigger. "Take one more step, and this entire level—along with your precious brats—goes up in smoke! You can't beat the Consortium! We are everywhere!"Evan stopped dead in his tracks. For a fraction of a second, the breath caught in his throat. The monitor above the glass cell displayed a live countdown timer: 01:45... 01:44...Across the room, through a hidden maintenance intercom line that had remained open, Tommy’s voice crackled into Evan’s earpiece. "Boss, I’ve got their master encryption tablet. I can override the detonator frequency, but I need a distraction. Exactly three seconds."Evan didn't hesitate. He slowly lowered his rifle, letting it clatter against the concrete floor, raising both empty hands in the air to draw the commander's total, undivided attention. "You want me, not them," Evan said steadily, projecting absolute, unwavering calm even as his heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. "Let the children go. Take my life, take my empire, take everything I own. But leave them out of this."The commander laughed hysterically, his eyes wild with adrenaline. "Your empire is already dead, Whitaker! Say goodbye to—"BEEP.The countdown timer on the wall suddenly froze, locked at 00:12. Tommy had severed the wireless frequency from the mainframe.In that exact microsecond of hesitation, Evan moved faster than humanly possible. He lunged sideways, sweeping a heavy steel wrench off a nearby workbench and hurling it through the observation glass with devastating force. The ballistic glass shattered inward in a spiderweb of cracks. Before the commander could pull the trigger of his sidearm, Evan vaulted through the broken frame, tackling the man to the ground and disarming him with brutal, crushing efficiency.
