Chapter 5 - The Short-Circuit Injunction-5
"This is an administrative forgery! This data brief is an illegal fabrication!" Celeste Halstead shrieked, her voice cracking into a high-pitched, desperate wail of pure social panic as she lunged toward the altar platform, her diamond rings clawing frantically at the air. "Warren! Call the security detail! Tell the municipal police to have this woman hauled out of our pavilion immediately! She’s experiencing a psychotic domestic breakdown!"
"The security detail isn't answering your clearance tokens, Celeste," Victor Sterling’s voice bellowed through the conservatory as he stepped through the shattered rear doors of the wing, followed by twenty heavily armed FBI tactical operators whose high-intensity searchlights cut through the candle smoke like the hand of God.
"Federal agents! Nobody move! Put your hands on your heads!" the lead tactical operator roared, his service weapon raised and rock-steady as his laser sight painted a bright neon red dot directly on Warren’s chest.
Warren let out a sharp, guttural roar of pure, unadulterated desperation, throwing his body weight forward across the altar desk to reach his personal mobile phone, his thumb smashing the keys to attempt a manual remote data-wipe command that would incinerate the Nicosia server registries before the federal specialists could mirror the drive cores.
I didn't try to tackle him myself, and I didn't step back from his path. I took the silver master cryptographic token from my bouquet, shoved it straight into the central media terminal dock console on the podium, and threw the toggle switch to the maximum frequency.
CRASH-BOOM.
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A blinding, blue-white explosion of high-voltage electrical arc fire erupted from the column's internal wiring harness, short-circuiting the main three-phase industrial power line running into the mansion's grid. The massive glass conservatory was plunged into a sudden, dead twilight, the high-density projectors grinding to a sudden stop as the progress bar for the database wipe froze dead at 19.8%.
The text overlay on my phone screen blinked twice, turned a pale, mechanical amber, and the heavy pneumatic locking bolts of the estate's wrought-iron perimeter gates clicked shut from the outside with a sound that finalized the total destruction of the Halstead family empire.
