Chapter 1319:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

The purple node began to expand, trying to trace the Chimera’s signal back to the mountain. Gabriel wasn’t just defending; he was trying to find her. He was trying to kill the rider.

“He thinks he’s my equal,” Skye said, a cold, humorless smile touching her lips. “He thinks that because he can move the pieces, he understands the game. He hasn’t realized yet that I’ve changed the board.”

She leaned forward, her neural link deepening. She felt the Chimera’s power surge, fueled by the mountain’s massive geothermal generators. She didn’t just block Gabriel’s attack; she consumed it. She took his garbage data, reconfigured it into a virus, and sent it back down the line.

“I see you, Gabriel,” she whispered.

On the screen, the Seraphim was isolated. Skye began to peel back its layers of encryption like the skin of an onion. She saw the yacht’s manifests, its passenger list, and its internal security feeds. The twelve members of the Ouroboros board were all there, gathered in a soundproofed lounge, trying to figure out why their empires were vanishing into thin air.

“They’re all together,” Skye said, her voice layered with the synthesized hum of the machine. “The entire head of the hydra is in one place. They think they’re safe on the water, far from any jurisdiction.”

“Can you stop the boat?” Caleb asked.

J𝗼in 𝘵𝗁𝘦 𝖼𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂ոі𝘁𝗒 а𝘵 g𝖺𝗹𝗻o𝗏е𝗹𝘀.𝗰о𝗆

“I can do more than stop it,” Skye said. “I can turn it into a cage.”

She reached out through the web, seizing control of the Seraphim’s navigation, its engines, and its electronic locks. She slaved the yacht’s systems to the Chimera, turning the multimillion-dollar vessel into a floating prison.

“Liam,” she whispered into the comms, her voice traveling through the satellite burst to the darkened office in London. “The target is acquired. Monaco. The Seraphim. I have the doors locked. The sword is ready.”

In London, the Lightning Rod was doing its job with devastating efficiency. Liam Kensington had spent the last forty-eight hours acting like a man possessed, a corporate warlord who didn’t care about profit or loss, only about destruction. Kensington Global was hemorrhaging money, but Davenport’s empire was being torn to shreds in the process.

Liam stood in the center of his boardroom, the walls of glass reflecting the cold, grey London dawn. He was the image of a man on the edge: dark circles under his eyes, his shirt collar open, his movements jerky and filled with a dangerous energy.

The double doors of the boardroom burst open. Richard Davenport walked in, his face a mask of purple-veined fury. He was no longer the elegant, composed banker. He was a man watching his life’s work be incinerated in real time. He held a small silver pistol in his hand, and it was shaking.

“You’ve destroyed it all!” Davenport screamed, the sound echoing in the hollow space. “The order of the world! The stability! Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Kensington? You’ve let that woman burn the foundations of everything we built!”

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