Chapter 8 - The Trojan Horse
Julian spent the next three hours coding like a man possessed. His fingers blurred over the keyboard, fueled by adrenaline and sheer, unadulterated rage.
He wasn't just copying the Vanguard data onto a flash drive. He was building a digital Trojan Horse. He encoded a devastating, self-replicating malware virus—a digital plague—directly into the metadata of the files. The moment Vanguard plugged the drive into their mainframe to verify the data, the virus would activate, permanently bricking their entire global financial network and simultaneously transmitting the encrypted ledger to every major news outlet on earth.
"It's a dead-man's switch," Julian explained to Elena as he finished the final lines of code. "If Silas kills us, the data still gets out. Their empire burns."
Elena wiped her eyes, her expression hardening into a mask of pure vengeance. She checked the magazines of her pistols. "I don't care about their empire, Julian. I just want my sister back. And I want Silas dead."
They drove back into the heart of Chicago. The snow had begun to fall heavily, blanketing the city in a deceptive, peaceful silence.
The Navy Pier shipping yards were desolate, a graveyard of rusted containers and towering steel cranes overlooking the black, freezing waters of Lake Michigan.
Julian stepped out of the car, holding the flash drive in the air. The wind howled off the lake.
May you like
From the shadows of a massive crane, a pair of headlights clicked on, blinding him. Silas stepped out of a black SUV, holding a terrified teenage girl by the arm. A suppressed pistol was pressed against her spine.
"The drive, Mr. Hayes," Silas called out over the wind.
