Chapter 10 - The False Victory
"Mom?" Olivia whispered, her voice cracking with raw emotion.
The woman rushed forward and wrapped her arms tightly around Olivia.
"I am so sorry I had to hide from you, baby," her mother cried softly.
"I have been guarding the Ares Protocol down here to keep it away from your father."
Hale limped into the room, leaning heavily against the steel doorframe, looking completely bewildered.
"She is a friendly," Olivia told him quickly, wiping tears from her dirty face.
Her mother immediately went to work, grabbing a medical kit from the sterile counter.
She skillfully cleaned and stitched Hale’s wound, her hands moving with practiced, reassuring speed.
"Your father’s men will be here in less than ten minutes," her mother warned them urgently.
"We have to transmit the weapon's secure extraction codes to the Pentagon loyalists before they arrive."
She handed Olivia a sleek, silver tablet displaying a complex biometric scanner.
"Only your blood can authorize the final transfer," her mother explained.
"Press your thumb to the screen, and the cavalry will come to take the weapon safely away."
Olivia felt a massive wave of victory wash over her tired soul.
She had finally defeated her father, saved her mother, and stopped the deadliest weapon on earth from being unleashed.
She pressed her bleeding thumb firmly against the glass scanner.
The tablet glowed bright green, announcing that the secure transmission was successfully completed.
"We did it," Olivia exhaled, slumping against the cold metal counter in sheer relief.
Hale smiled for the first time in days, resting his head back against the wall.
Olivia looked across the room and caught her mother’s reflection in the glass of a containment chamber.
Her mother picked up a discarded surgical scalpel from the medical tray to clean it.
She held the blade using a highly specific, reversed left-handed grip.
It was a lethal tactical grip taught exclusively to the elite assassins of Task Unit Grey Lantern.
Olivia’s real mother had been right-handed and had never held a weapon in her entire life.
May you like
"The transmission to the Pentagon went through perfectly," the woman said, turning around with a chillingly cold smile.
"But it wasn't an extraction request, Olivia; it was the global launch sequence for the Ares Protocol."
