Victor set his glass down. "Because I don't want to conquer the world, Olga. I just want my ten billion dollars back. Your mother wants to fundamentally alter human free will. And she can't do it without you."
👉 Victor pressed a button on his desk, revealing a massive holographic map of the Pacific Ocean—and a terrifying, ticking countdown timer hovering directly over the Mariana Trench.
The red holographic numbers glowed ominously in the luxurious, dimly lit train car. 72:00:00.
"Three days," Victor stated, leaning forward, his pale eyes completely serious. "That is exactly how long it will take for the autonomous submarine housing the Mother's Vault to rise from the crushing depths of the Mariana Trench to a serviceable depth. Elena initiated the wake-up sequence thirty minutes ago from London."
Olga stared at the map, her forensic mind quickly calculating the logistics. "An autonomous sub doesn't just float up. It needs a massive ballast purge. It will be vulnerable when it surfaces."
"Exactly," Victor nodded, clearly impressed. "For twenty-eight years, that server has been buried under six miles of ocean, completely protected fromEMP strikes, satellite tracking, and physical hacking. But to broadcast the Genesis Protocol to the global grid, the submarine must surface and deploy its relay antenna. We have a seventy-two-hour window to intercept it."
"And you brought me here because you don't know the exact surfacing coordinates," Olga deduced, her eyes narrowing. "You have the money, Victor, but you don't have the math. Elena encrypted the surfacing algorithm, didn't she?"
Victor’s jaw tightened. It was a microscopic tell, but Olga caught it. The Architect was blind.
"She used a dynamic cipher based on oceanic currents and lunar cycles," Victor admitted bitterly. "My supercomputers have been crunching the data for a decade, and we still have a search radius of five hundred square miles. It’s too big. If I send my naval fleet to the wrong sector, Elena will connect to the server, upload your stolen biometric data, and lock me out forever."
"Wait," Blake interrupted, looking entirely out of his depth. "If Elena needs Olga’s blood to unlock the vault, why is she surfacing the sub now? She doesn't have Olga."
Olga’s blood ran cold. She looked at her ruined white tuxedo, remembering the brutal fight in the London bunker, the way the compromised Interpol agents had lunged at her.
"She doesn't need my blood," Olga whispered in sheer horror. "She needs my DNA. During the fight... one of the agents scratched my arm. He got skin cells. Hair follicles. It’s enough for a bio-engineer to synthesize a digital key."
Victor stood up, his face hardening. "Then the board is set. Elena is flying to the Pacific right now. I have a nuclear-powered stealth destroyer waiting at a private dock in Edinburgh. I am offering you a truce, Olga. You decode the surfacing coordinates using your mother’s ledgers, and I will give you the resources to destroy the Genesis Protocol once and for all."
"And in return?" Olga asked.
"I keep my ten billion dollars, and I walk away," Victor said smoothly.
Olga knew he was lying. Victor Kaelen never walked away. He wanted the protocol for himself. But right now, he was her only ride to the Pacific.
"Give me the raw data," Olga commanded, walking over to the holographic terminal.
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For the next ten hours, as the train roared through Scotland, Olga did what she did best. She audited the ocean. She cross-referenced Elena’s old financial ledgers with global weather patterns, looking for the hidden variables. She stripped away the noise until only the terrifying truth remained.
👉 "Victor," Olga said softly, staring at the final decoded coordinates on the screen. "The submarine isn't surfacing in the open ocean... it’s surfacing directly underneath a United States Naval Carrier Strike Group."
Victor Kaelen stared at the holographic map, genuine shock breaking his icy facade. "A US Carrier Strike Group? That's impossible. The US Navy doesn't run drills in that sector of the Mariana Trench this time of year."
"They aren't running drills, Victor," Olga said, her fingers flying across the terminal to pull up public Pentagon deployment records. "Elena didn't just hack Interpol. She manipulated global financial markets last month using the Thorne Syndicate's leftover shell companies. She intentionally crashed the microchip supply chain in Taiwan, forcing the US Navy to deploy the 7th Fleet to secure the shipping lanes. She manufactured an international crisis just to give her submarine a shield."
Blake Vance collapsed into a leather chair, rubbing his face in absolute despair. "We’re dead. We are literally going to war with the United States Navy. I should have stayed in prison."
"No one is going to war with the Navy," Olga said sharply. "Elena is brilliant. The autonomous submarine is completely undetectable. It’s going to surface right in the middle of the Strike Group's formation, piggyback off the military's secure satellite uplink, broadcast the Genesis Protocol, and sink back into the trench before the Navy even realizes it was there."
"Then we destroy the uplink," Victor said, his eyes darkening with ruthless intent. "My stealth destroyer is armed with experimental EMP torpedoes. I will sink the Mother's Vault before it can transmit."
"If you fire a torpedo near a US Carrier, they will blow your destroyer out of the water in sixty seconds," Olga countered. "You can't use brute force, Victor. We have to infiltrate the submarine."
Victor scoffed. "Infiltrate it? It’s a sealed cylinder of titanium designed to withstand eight tons of pressure per square inch. There are no doors."