The air in the vault grew thin, smelling of ozone and burning circuitry. Inside the sealed chamber, I watched the screen flicker through its death throes. Every name that vanished was a chain being broken; every red "liquidated" icon that dissolved into static was a secret Yuri could no longer hold over the world's head.
Outside the reinforced glass, Yuri was a silhouette of frantic, controlled rage. He slammed his fist against the transparency, but the room was a tomb designed to withstand a nuclear pulse. He wasn't yelling anymore. He was just watching me, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with the realization that the "key" had just turned in the lock and snapped itself off.
"Emergency Protocol: Total Deletion 60%," the synthesized voice droned.
I looked down at the brass key, now twisted and glowing with the heat of the electrical short. My father hadn't wanted me to rule; he had wanted me to end it. The Glass Ledger wasn't a gift—it was a curse that had to be buried.
Suddenly, the floor beneath me shuddered. A heavy, rhythmic thud-thud-thud echoed through the titanium walls. The warehouse above was being torn apart. Mikhail's forces had arrived, and without the Ledger to protect him, Yuri was just a man in a burning house.
The door's manual override began to groan. Someone on the outside—Miller or Mikhail—was using a thermal lance to cut through the hinges.
"Jessy!" Yuri's voice cracked through the internal comms, desperate and raw. "The deletion is enough! Open the door before they cut through! If they find you in there with a dead system, they'll kill you just for the spite of it!"
I looked at the terminal. 85%. 90%.
I moved to the pedestal and used the sharp edge of the broken burner phone to slice into the palm of my hand. I pressed my blood against the biometric scanner one last time.
"Final Authorization: Jessica Marcel," I whispered. "Execute 'Phoenix' Exit."
The back wall of the vault—the one Yuri hadn't mentioned—slid open with a hiss of ancient hydraulics. It revealed a narrow, dark tunnel leading toward the sound of the ocean. My father's real fail-safe. Not a way into the empire, but a way out of it.
I looked back at the main door. The steel was beginning to glow cherry-red as the thermal lance ate through the lock. I saw Yuri through the glass. He had stepped back, drawing his weapon, preparing to face the tide of men about to burst through. He looked at the closing back panel, then at me.
He knew. He knew I was leaving him to the wolves he had helped create.
"Yuri!" I screamed over the roar of the alarms.
He didn't move toward the back exit. He couldn't. The system recognized only one heartbeat for the escape route. He just gave me a short, jagged nod—the ghost of the man who had shielded me from the bullets.
"Go, Jessy," he mouthed through the glass. "Be the ghost."
The back panel slammed shut, plunging me into darkness. I ran. I ran through the cold, damp tunnel as the muffled sound of a final, massive explosion rocked the earth behind me. I didn't stop until the air turned salty and the sound of the crashing Atlantic filled my ears.
I emerged onto a hidden ledge halfway down the cliffside. Far below, a small boat bobbed in the surf, a single light blinking in the dark.
I reached into my pocket and felt the twisted brass key. It was worthless now. The empire was gone. The Ledger was ash. And for the first time since the "Stranger in White" took my life, I could breathe.