Page 60 of Echos and Empires
TWENTY-ONE
“Not my circus, but my monkies.”William muttered, lifting his gaze.
Monitors flickered with static and empty, hidden threats as William stared ahead, hunched over against the sickly glow of the surveillance feeds. Liam was on a different rotation, leaving him full responsibility to hack into the system as needed and see through the cameras to find anything they could that would help them destroy Warrington.
This wasn’t his wheelhouse, but he would do what needed to be done to save Emma and their children.
No matter the mission.
Finding the old computer building had been a stroke of luck, but Liam had even asked permission, saying he wanted to test some things out. If anyone other than Victor worried about Chris’s allegiance—and by extension the units—they didn’t show it.
Each keystroke reverberated with his defiance, his gloved fingers translating Alex’s instructions into chaos and sabotage. Faulty circuits surrendered to his will, bypassed by clever exploits, but he worried his triumph was an illusion. The consolebuzzed angrily at him, and scattered tools clattered to the floor from the vibration. A smile ghosted his lips as the first surveillance feed blinked out, and he murmured, “Let’s see how dark I can turn their lights.”
Everything they did was risky, but if they didn’t step up their game, their children would be here and Warrington would still be alive.
Not that we’ve committed to killing him.The bitter thought was strange for him, but William wouldn’t rest knowing the man who destroyed his family was alive with the ability to eliminate his new family.
The old control room smelled of damp metal and burned circuitry. A thin layer of dust coated everything except the small, cluttered section he had commandeered as his own. Surrounded by flickering screens and disconnected panels, it felt as if the technology itself resisted him, an angry dragon he needed to tame. The hum of electricity permeated the air, pulsing in time with his own heartbeat.
“And now for the part I really don’t want to do,” he didn’t expect anyone to respond, but he found himself more comfortable if he spoke.
He knew it should be Alex here, not him. He knew it as surely as he knew the layout of this island and the dangers that lurked above. But Chris had trusted him, sent him in alone. The thought spurred him on, fingers flying faster across the battered keyboard, coded exploits a silent language only he and the machine understood.
His gaze flicked to the room’s corners, to where hidden cameras might already be watching, documenting his every move. But he couldn’t slow down now. Not when he was this close. Custom programs scrolled across the screen, eating away at the lines of Warrington’s digital defenses. The name“ShieldMatrix” loomed, a beast to be slain. His eyes burned with focus, blue and determined in the dim light.
The longer he worked, the more confident he became. He reconnected faulty circuits following Alex’s explicit instructions, each success a victory he couldn’t yet celebrate. His lips pressed into a tight line as he bypassed yet another layer of security. A metallic tang of adrenaline filled his mouth, the acrid taste of risk and reward. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose, and moved on to the next panel.
Suddenly, the feed from one of the monitors blinked to black. The surveillance system was finally yielding, losing its grip on one area of the compound. It fueled him with renewed energy. He glanced down at the mess of wires, half-expecting them to spring to life and retaliate, but they lay limp and defeated.
“I’m coming for all of you,” he breathed, his own voice a stranger’s whisper in the cavernous room. “Not today, but knowing we can do this, we’re going to send you to the dark.”
He refocused, he couldn’t target the whole system, but they wanted to see what would happen if just a few cameras went down. They had to play the long game and test everything if they were going to win against a man with all the weapons.
Well, most of them.
Silence wrapped around him, the only sound the occasional clatter of a tool hitting the floor. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t. Each new script was a dagger aimed at Victor’s all-seeing eye. He fed the code into the system, watched as it devoured yet another piece of surveillance. This was more than disabling cameras. This was cutting off a piece of Victor himself, and for that alone, William needed to succeed.
His thoughts wavered back to Alex. It should have been the medic’s fingers flying over this keyboard, his intellect pitted against the software. William pictured him now, probablypacing and worrying about the mission he couldn’t see. But they’d sent him. Chris had sent him. He had to remember that.
More monitors flickered out, each one a small burst of victory. His resolve crystallized, sharper and more determined than ever. He worked on, his world narrowed to the glowing screens and the relentless hum of resistance. He paused, fingers hovering above the keys, surveying the battlefield he’d created. The scattered tools, the tangled wires, the empty black monitors. It was chaos, but it was his. A moment of silence stretched, fragile and tense. He closed his eyes, drew a breath heavy with purpose and exhaustion, and began again.
His finger slipped, and the computer screamed at him, the wailing cry louder than the sirens from when sirens had a place in the world. Slamming his hands against the keys, William tried everything to shut the fucking thing off.
A sudden slam drew his attention across the room.
A door he hadn’t seen sprung open when he’d smashed the keys. The opening gaped like a silent scream, inviting him into darkness. He glanced at his cell phone, knowing it would track him and sent a quick text to everyone letting him know a door opened and he was going through it.
William’s fingers tapped along the desk as he waited for a response to chime. Seconds stretched to minutes, and he decided they would see it when they saw it. He was careful, his eyes were honed. He would be fine for a bit if they weren’t sure where he was.
“Down into the deep we go,” William grabbed his flashlight and turned it on, beaming through the open door and revealing stone stairs.
William’s flashlight stuttered over steps, revealing shadowed secrets with every quaking beam. The stone walls leaned in with oppressive history, and his footsteps became his heartbeat, reverberating in the subterranean silence. Messages scarredthe walls, and surgical detritus told tales of ambition and cruelty. Vials whispered their secrets through layers of dust, cryptic and unexplained. An island-wide schematic covered one wall, its lines like veins feeding Victor’s paranoia. He halted, overwhelmed and breathless, feeling the machinery’s distant hum for the first time.
He took another step, each descent a confrontation with the unknown. The air was colder here, thin and sharp like the edge of a blade. It prickled his skin, drawing his breath into jagged shapes that danced before his eyes. A chill settled deep in his bones, as if the walls themselves held grudges. They loomed over him, monumental and indifferent to his intrusion.
His beam pivoted over the walls, where words were etched with precision and malice. It was a catalog of sorts, a list of numbers and phrases, each line speaking to experiments that defied explanation. What did they mean? He could only guess, but each letter felt like a fingerprint left by Victor’s monstrous ambition.
William’s fingers brushed the cold stone, feeling the weight of history, the burden of what Victor had wrought. He stumbled slightly, the enormity of it all jarring him. He steadied himself against a metal gurney, its rusted surface gritty beneath his touch. Abandoned equipment lay scattered, ghosts of purpose lingering in their dust-caked forms. Vials with cryptic labels sat in perfect disarray, a library of silence and poison.
