Chapter 95 - The Ghost of the Patriarch: The Throne Built on Shattered Ice
The old man’s chest rose and fell with a mechanical rattle. When he opened his eyes, they were milky with age, yet when he fixed his gaze upon the two infants strapped to Claire’s chest, a grotesque smile stretched across his sunken lips.
"You always were my most resilient creation, Claire," the Patriarch rasped, his voice vibrating through an artificial vocal synthesizer in his throat. "Your mother fled into the world thinking she could hide you among the common cattle. But blood... blood always remembers its purpose."
Dante raised his weapon directly at the old man's forehead. "You're a dead man breathing on borrowed electricity. Call off your dogs and open the hangar doors, or I'll finish what the fire at the trench started."
Vivienne didn't flinch. She rested a manicured hand on the armrest of the wheelchair, looking down at Dante with disdain. "Pull the trigger, Moretti. Grandfather’s heart is wired directly to the warhead failsafes inside this vessel’s keel. The instant his pulse drops to zero, thirty kilotons of nuclear fury will vaporize this warship, along with half the eastern seaboard."
"A dead man's switch," Dante growled, keeping his sight picture locked on the tyrant.
"An absolute insurance policy," the Patriarch corrected softly. "Do you know why the child cried, Claire? All those weeks in Dante's mansion, screaming endlessly in the arms of nurses and doctors?"
Claire gripped her rifle tighter, her heart pounding against her ribs. "He was in pain."
"He was disconnected," the Patriarch wheezed, his bony fingers trembling against his controls. "The Moretti bloodline and the Sterling genome were engineered to create an organic cipher. The child’s brain is a biological encryption key capable of overriding every sovereign missile defense system on earth. When he was born, his mind broadcasted on an open carrier wave, searching for his receiver. When he saw you... when he saw your name tag... his neural network finally locked onto its source."
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The old man chuckled, a sound like dry leaves scraping over concrete. "He wasn't crying because he was frightened. He was crying because he was waiting for his commander."
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