Page 71 of Undercover Shadow
“Lex, stop.” Con held her back. “You can’t help her. She’s gone.”
She stopped struggling but couldn’t look away from McLaren’s body collapsed near the terminal.
The silence stretched. Then the laptop screen flashed again—Administrative Override 47% Complete.
“No!” Ambrose’s head snapped toward the terminal, and his weapon swung away from Nightingale as he lunged for the keyboard.
I charged across the room. Twenty feet disappeared in seconds. Ambrose jerked back with his focus split between the terminal and maintaining his grip on both weapons. For a fraction of a second, his thumb lifted from the mobile screen.
The laptop blared an alert:Countdown Initiated. Ninety Seconds to AIWS Deployment.
“No!” Ambrose’s eyes went wide as he realized what he’d done. The mobile tumbled from his hand, clattering across the floor as he twisted toward me.
The room erupted into motion. Dalgleish raised his weapon toward Con, but Ash was faster—a single shot hit him in the chest. The man’s sidearm spun away as he fell backward. MacLeod moved to intercept me, but Renegade caught him, using his momentum to slam him against the wall with enough force to drive the air from his lungs. MacKenzie raised his aim toward Con, but Lex was already moving. Her shot found its mark—shoulder, not fatal but incapacitating. When he dropped, his weapon skittered away.
Ambrose jerked the barrel toward Nightingale, but I was already there. I hit his arm as he squeezed the trigger, and the shot went wild. The bullet punched into the wall behind us, sending chips flying. We grappled for control, spinning across the floor. I locked both hands around his wrist, but he was stronger than he looked. Years of bitterness and rage fueled muscles that shouldn’t have held against mine.
“You don’t understand!” he snarled, spittle flying. “You’ve had everything handed to you!”
Con reached Nightingale, and his knife flashed as he cut through the zip ties. She stumbled up from the chair, her legs unsteady after being bound for so long. Lex pulled her back toward the wall, away from the fight.
The weapon remained trapped between us. Ambrose twisted hard, trying to angle the barrel toward me. I drove my kneeinto his ribs and felt something give—a crack that meant broken bones. His grip loosened for half a second, and I ripped the weapon free, sending it across the flagstones toward Gus.
Now, we faced each other with no gun between us and no leverage for either side.
He swung wildly, but I blocked it and drove my fist into his solar plexus. Air rushed out of him in a whoosh, but he came back with a punch that caught my ribs. Pain flared, but I’d taken worse.
“You don’t understand!” he repeated in a ragged voice. “You never understood!”
I blocked his next swing and grabbed his arm, using his momentum to flip him. “You’re right. I don’t understand killing innocent people. I don’t understand betraying family. I don’t understand becoming a monster because you didn’t get what you wanted.”
Across the room, Ash moved to help Renegade secure MacLeod while Gus covered MacKenzie’s fallen form and kicked his weapon away.
I spun Ambrose around and slammed him face-first into the floor. His head cracked against the flagstone with a sound like a breaking egg, and his body went limp.
Con was there at once, securing him with zip ties he’d pulled from his vest.
Red numbers pulsed on the screen. The countdown was still running as sixty seconds blazed in text.
“What did you do?” Con’s knee pressed harder into Ambrose’s back.
Ambrose’s cackle erupted from beneath Con’s weight. The sound belonged to a man who’d lost everything and decided to take the world with him.
“I held it as long as I could, but you made me drop it.” Blood showed on his teeth from where his face had connected with the floor. “This is on your conscience, not mine.”
Fifty seconds remained.
“Every networked system on the planet crashes.” His voice rose, triumphant despite his defeat. “Hospitals go dark. Planes fall from the sky. Cars with electronic ignition stop working. Traffic systems fail. Emergency services go blind. Life support machines die.” His grin sickened me. “And we’re in Scotland when it goes live. We all die here. Everyone loses.”
“No!”Nightingale yelled, moving toward the laptop.
Con tried to stop her, but she shook him off.
“The codes.” Her voice cut through the panic. “I have the codes.”
I stared at her. “What codes?”
Forty-five seconds blazed red.
