Chapter 10
Ethan watched Grace stumble back a step,
her face devoid of all color as she stared at the glowing monitor.
He reached out instantly,
catching her arm and stabilizing her against the sudden rush of overwhelming information.
The anger inside him burned hotter now,
directed not just at Brooke,
but at the memory of his own father who had manipulated their lives from beyond the grave.
"This changes nothing,"
Ethan said,
his voice cutting through the hum of the servers,
"whatever contracts were signed in the past are void."
"I dissolved the company’s legal frameworks today,"
he reminded Brooke,
glaring at her with absolute certainty,
"there is no entity left to enforce these archives."
Brooke smiled darkly,
leaning back against the console with her arms crossed ov
er her chest.
"You dissolved the public entity,
Ethan,"
she corrected him,
her tone dripping with corporate arrogance,
"you broke the glass house that the world could see."
"But the real power of Whitmore was never listed on the New York Stock Exchange,"
she explained,
gesturing to the endless rows of machines around them,
"this is an autonomous trust,
funded by offshore accounts that you cannot touch."
"When the main tower went dark today,"
she continued,
"this facility assumed control of all primary operations automatically."
"And right now,"
she added,
looking directly into Ethan's eyes,
"the system views you as a rogue element that needs to be synchronized."
Grace finally found her voice,
her anger pushing through the shock that had paralyzed her just moments before.
"My father would never have trapped people like this,"
she said,
her voice shaking but full of defiance,
"he was a good man who cared about his family."
Brooke raised an eyebrow,
tapping the screen again to bring up a video file from nineteen years ago.
The video showed a younger version of Grace's father,
sitting in a brightly lit lab,
speaking directly to the camera with an intense focus.
"We are creating a world without conflict,"
her father's voice echoed through the metal rafters of the foundry,
"a system where human choice is guided toward optimal harmony."
"Individual desire must be secondary to structural stability,"
he stated calmly in the video,
before the screen suddenly went black.
Grace felt tears welling in her eyes,
but she refused to let them fall in front of the woman who was enjoying her pain.
Ethan stepped between Grace and the monitor,
effectively cutting off Brooke's view of her target.
"We are leaving,"
Ethan stated flatly,
turning his back on the screens and taking Grace's hand in his own.
"You can stay here with your ghost machines,
Brooke,"
he said over his shoulder,
"but we are walking out of that door,
and we are never coming back."
Brooke didn't move to stop them,
her smile remaining perfectly fixed as they turned toward the exit.
"You can leave the building,
Ethan,"
she called out after them,
her voice echoing down the long,
dark corridor,
"but you can't leave the grid,
because the grid is already looking for you."
As they reached the heavy metal door,
the green indicator light suddenly flashed red,
May you like
and a loud,
mechanical locking mechanism slid into place with a terrifying finality.
