Author: [writers hub]
Mae-Yeon's head snapped up, her fingers pausing mid-air above the keyboard. Her eyes, cold and piercing, fixed on Zara. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips, devoid of warmth. "Ah, my dear Zara," she purred, her voice betraying no surprise, only a chilling satisfaction. "I confess, I did not expect you to find your way to this particular lair. Ragnar has taught you well." Her gaze flickered to the armed man. "But not well enough, it seems, to avoid the trap."
The gaunt guard, his face emotionless, raised his rifle, aiming directly at Zara. The metallic click of the safety being disengaged echoed ominously in the small chamber. Above them, the muffled shouts and confused roars from the convention hall were a distant, agonizing reminder of Ragnar's desperate fight.
"You won't get away with this," Zara stated, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts. "Ragnar knows. He knows about the deepfake, about the Trust. He knows it's you."
Mae-Yeon chuckled, a dry, papery sound that sent shivers down Zara's spine. "Does he, now? Even if he suspects, who will believe him? His own mother questions his judgment. His trusted allies are watching him unravel on screen, convinced of his betrayal. No, Zara. This is the moment the Botermet family will be purged of its 'modern' impurities and restored to its true, unbreakable power." Her eyes gleamed with fanaticism. "The deepfake is merely the public spectacle. The real cleansing begins now."
Zara's gaze darted around the cramped space. Monitors, wires, a single heavy-duty server rack humming ominously. And the armed guard, a silent, deadly obstacle. She had to act. She couldn't let Mae-Yeon continue uploading more lies, more corruption.
"Drop your weapon, girl," the guard commanded, his voice flat, emotionless.
Zara's hand instinctively went to her pocket, remembering the dagger she had used to cut the data cable in the vault tunnel. It was still there. Her only chance.
As the guard took a step forward, his rifle steady, Zara lunged, not at him, but at the server rack behind Mae-Yeon. She yanked at a thick bundle of cables, pulling with all her might. Mae-Yeon cried out, startled. The monitors flickered violently, then went dark. The hum of the server died. The flow of the deepfake, Zara hoped, was momentarily severed.
"Foolish girl!" Mae-Yeon shrieked, momentarily abandoning her calm facade, her face contorted in a mask of furious frustration. "You've only delayed the inevitable!"
The guard, reacting instantly to Zara's desperate move, brought the butt of his rifle down. Zara threw herself sideways, barely avoiding the blow, but the impact against her shoulder sent a searing pain through her arm. She stumbled, falling against a stack of discarded equipment, knocking over a heavy metal box. It clattered loudly, rolling across the floor and striking the guard's shin.
He grunted in pain, momentarily off-balance. Zara seized the opening. Scrambling to her feet, she pulled the dagger from her pocket. It wasn't the ideal weapon for a close-quarters fight, but it was all she had. She moved, not to attack directly, but to create another diversion. She hurled the dagger, not at the guard, but at a cluster of exposed wires near a flashing red light on a control panel beyond him.
The dagger struck true, severing the wires with a shower of sparks. The red light died. A high-pitched alarm began to shriek, deafening in the confined space.
"The main power grid!" Mae-Yeon screamed, her voice shrill with anger and alarm. "She's cut the feed to the hall's central system! She's trying to plunge us into darkness!"
The guard, disoriented by the noise and the sudden power disruption, spun towards the sparking wires. Zara didn't wait. This was her chance. She darted past him, heading not for the entrance she'd used, but for a smaller, unlit crawlspace Mae-Yeon's journal had indicated as an emergency escape route for the inner circle.
"After her!" Mae-Yeon shrieked, her voice now a furious, panicked roar.
Zara crawled through the suffocatingly tight space, dust and cobwebs clinging to her hanbok. The shrieking alarm continued to blare, echoing off the stone. Above, the chaos in the main hall seemed to swell, a new, desperate roar erupting as the deepfake completely vanished, replaced by dead screens. But Mae-Yeon had been right: Zara had only delayed the inevitable. The main power might be cut, but the Botermet Trust was saved, and the deepfake was gone, yet as Zara scrambled out of the crawlspace into another, even darker sub-level, she heard the chilling, rhythmic thud of multiple heavy footsteps closing in from both directions, realizing with a horrifying certainty that Mae-Yeon had not just one guard, but an entire hidden contingent, and Zara, now trapped in the suffocating darkness, was running out of places to hide, just as a cold, unfamiliar voice spoke from the shadows directly ahead, its tone devoid of emotion: "There you are, Mrs. Botermet. Grand-aunt Mae-Yeon has been expecting you." The voice was not of the syndicate, but of something far older, far more disciplined, leaving Zara with a chilling premonition that Mae-Yeon's true power, and her deadliest trap, had only just begun to reveal itself.