Chapter 965
She seized a heavy vase from the hallway table and drove it into the control panel beside the glass door with everything she had. Sparks erupted in a shower of light. The door jammed open, stuck halfway.
Alistair and Liam burst through, dragging Julian and the wounded Dominic behind them.
“Move!” Skye urged, pushing them forward.
They fought through the lounge, which was rapidly dissolving into chaos. The Administrator’s men moved to intercept, but the thickening smoke and the shattered order of events slowed them. Skye and her team hit the alley at a run, gasping in the cold night air.
“Where’s Parker?” Liam asked, staring at the empty van, his jaw tight.
𝖳𝗵𝖾 b𝖾𝘀𝗍 rе𝘃i𝗲𝗐ѕ 𝘰𝘯 𝗀𝘢l𝘯ov𝗲𝘭𝘴.𝖼𝗈m
“The Administrator took him,” Skye said, her voice barely steady. “To the Citadel.”
“Where is that?” Julian asked, leaning heavily against Liam, his strength nearly gone.
“I know,” Dominic wheezed from the ground, his voice barely audible. A desperate gleam flickered in his eyes.
“Why would we trust you?” Alistair grabbed him by the collar, his gaze burning.
“Because he’s going to kill me too!” Dominic spat. “Look in the mausoleum. There’s a map. It will show you the way.”
The Thorne Family Cemetery was a place of gothic beauty — weeping willows and marble angels, a serene facade over something far darker. It was also the last place anyone would think to look for a map.
“The mausoleum,” Alistair said, leading them toward the massive stone structure. “My mother isn’t actually buried here. It’s a dummy site.”
They pushed open the heavy stone door. It groaned on its hinges, the sound carrying through the silent cemetery. Inside, the air was cold and thick with the smell of dust and age. A single stone sarcophagus occupied the center of the room.
“Help me,” Alistair said to Liam, moving to the far end.
Together, they pushed the lid. Stone ground against stone in a long, grating echo.
The sarcophagus was empty — except for a false bottom, cleverly concealed.
Alistair pried it open. Inside lay a piece of parchment, yellowed with age but still intact.
“The coordinates,” Skye breathed.
She pulled the previous two map segments — the one from the Vance vault and the one from the Carter safe — from her pocket and spread them on the cold stone beside the third. The jagged edges matched perfectly. The lines connected, resolving into a single coherent image.
A location. Clear and undeniable.
“It’s not an island,” Alistair said, studying the chart carefully. “It’s an offshore platform.”
“The Citadel,” Julian said, recognizing the coordinates immediately, his voice heavy with grim understanding.
“The Citadel?” Skye frowned. “We were just there. Operation Firestorm. We burned the upper deck rescuing Victoria.”
“We barely scratched the surface,” Alistair said, tracing a red line that plunged deep below the waterline. “Look at this. The rig was the tip of the iceberg. The map points to a sub-aquatic level — ‘The Anchor.’ It doesn’t appear on any blueprint we’ve seen.”
“That’s why the servers weren’t in the control room,” Liam realized. “They’re underwater. Cooled by the ocean itself. That’s where the core of the operation is.”
.
.