Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 31
Fourteen minutes remained when Connor turned from Cross’s image to Scarlett. He had spent years making decisions alone, but this choice belonged to both of them. Scarlett studied the targeting map and told him to buy her six minutes.
Connor opened a channel to Cross and pretended to discuss surrender. He demanded proof that the cities could still be spared. Cross displayed three armed systems and warned that any interference would trigger them automatically.
Cypher noticed that only one feed carried live telemetry. The other two repeated identical power fluctuations, too perfect to be real. Cross had built his threat from one weapon and two convincing ghosts.
That knowledge did not make the danger smaller. The real weapon was aimed at the city sheltering Summer. Scarlett loaded Guardian into every civilian emergency network between Dominion and the target.
Voss offered to breach the chamber while Connor distracted Cross. Connor promised no immunity, only the chance to survive the disaster he had helped create. Hatred made the terms acceptable to Voss.
At ten minutes, Voss detonated a maintenance panel beside the sealed corridor. Automated defenses rotated toward him. Connor crossed the exposed floor while their fire followed the louder threat.
Scarlett entered her mother’s biometric signature. Guardian spread across traffic systems, rescue satellites, and municipal power grids. It could not cancel the launch, but it could create another destination.
Cross realized the negotiation had been a trap. He fired through the chamber door as Connor forced it open. The first shot struck steel, and the second shattered a control screen beside Scarlett.
Connor reached Cross before a third shot. They crashed into the console, fighting above the pulsing launch command. Cross accused him of sacrificing an empire for a wife and child.
Connor answered that an empire unable to protect them deserved to fall. He drove Cross away from the controls. Cypher restored a single physical connection for Guardian.
Five minutes remained. Scarlett found an abandoned military testing zone beyond the city and redirected every rescue beacon toward it. Guardian needed the weapon to mistake evacuation coordinates for its target.
Cross broke free and reached the launch key. Connor caught his wrist, but the command registered beneath their hands. The timer disappeared, replaced by a flight path toward Summer’s city.
Scarlett pushed Guardian through the open connection. For one terrible second, nothing changed. Then the red trajectory bent away from the population center.
The weapon struck the empty testing ground. A distant white flash filled the surveillance screens before the feeds collapsed. No city burned, but the shock wave raced back through Dominion’s unstable underground systems.
Connor pulled Scarlett behind the reinforced console as the chamber ceiling fractured. Cypher dragged an injured director toward the emergency stairs. Smoke swallowed the room and separated Voss from the others.
Police breached the upper floors once Cross’s defenses failed. They found Cross beneath fallen steel, alive and screaming that Dominion still belonged to him. Connor watched officers place him in restraints.
Scarlett counted the team twice. Cypher was injured but standing, and the trapped directors had escaped. Voss was missing.
A damaged terminal revealed that someone had removed the final Aegis fragment during the collapse. Security footage showed Voss entering a service tunnel seconds before it sealed. He had used their victory as his escape.
Connor’s phone finally connected to Summer. Her frightened voice asked whether the red lights outside meant he had broken another promise. He told her the danger was over and that he was coming home.
Behind him, Scarlett watched Cross disappear into police custody while Cypher traced Voss’s stolen file. They had saved three cities, but the last copy of Aegis was loose in the hands of a man with nothing left to lose.