Chapter 9 - Five Minutes Before Lantern Exposed Everyone
Four minutes forty-two seconds.
The servers drew power from three sources.
Building supply.
Battery storage.
Generator.
Cutting electricity would do nothing.
The release process had local redundancy.
“Network?” I asked.
My mother answered.
“Multiple outbound routes.”
“Kill internet.”
“Satellite backup.”
“Of course.”
Matteo stood beside me.
“What can I do?”
“Stop asking questions for thirty seconds.”
He actually obeyed.
I traced the low-voltage control feeds.
Digital systems still depend on physical relays somewhere.
That was my advantage.
People who worshiped software always forgot electricity had to move through something real.
Four minutes.
I found six relay outputs.
Five belonged to cooling and battery management.
The sixth disappeared beneath the stage.
“That's it.”
Grant helped pull floor panels.
Fiber.
Control wiring.
A hardened communication box.
My mother stared.
“Manual release gateway.”
“Can we destroy it?”
“If it detects tampering, it publishes.”
“Fantastic.”
Three minutes twenty.
I opened the housing.
Inside were dual power paths and a tamper loop.
I recognized the architecture.
My mother did too.
“You taught me this.”
She looked stunned.
“What?”
“When I was twelve. The alarm box in our basement.”
Memory clicked.
She taught me how to bypass a loop without breaking continuity.
At the time she claimed it was for a faulty window sensor.
She had been training me.
Again.
Anger could wait.
I bridged the tamper pair.
Disconnected the first supply.
System remained armed.
Two minutes.
Matteo's phone rang.
Vincent.
He answered on speaker.
“Enjoying the lesson?”
Matteo's voice stayed calm.
“You lost.”
“Have I?”
“Yes.”
“Your electrician has ninety seconds.”
I kept working.
“She's not my electrician,” Matteo said.
Good answer.
Vincent laughed.
“She will be when this is over.”
“No.”
“You underestimate necessity.”
Matteo looked at me.
“I've done that before.”
Seventy seconds.
Second power path.
Hidden capacitor bank.
I swore.
My mother moved beside me.
“Here.”
She pointed.
A bleeder resistor path.
I understood instantly.
We worked together.
First time in sixteen years.
No emotional reconciliation.
Just hands.
Tools.
Knowledge inherited whether I wanted it or not.
Thirty seconds.
Grant shouted the count.
I hated him.
“Stop counting!”
“Twenty-five!”
“I said stop!”
Matteo silenced him.
Ten seconds.
I bridged the capacitor.
Cut the trigger conductor.
Nothing happened.
Five.
Four.
Three.
The timer froze.
00:03.
Nobody breathed.
Then the stage went dark.
Grant whispered:
“Did we win?”
A green status LED appeared.
My mother laughed.
I sat on the floor.
“Now we did.”
Matteo crouched beside me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good work.”
“Still no.”
He smiled.
Then every server rack powered down automatically.
We had stopped the release.
But not the system.
Files remained encrypted.
Vincent remained free.
We searched the communication box.
One hardware token inside.
Coordinates.
A marina.
Grant moved.
Matteo stopped him.
“No.”
Grant frowned.
“We can catch him.”
“No.”
“He's running.”
“Exactly.”
I understood.
Vincent expected pursuit.
Another test.
Another trap.
Matteo had finally learned not to chase the spark.
We traced ownership of the marina instead.
A shell corporation connected to a private island off Maine.
No obvious Vincent link.
But my mother recognized the company.
“Salvatore bought it.”
Matteo stared.
“My father?”
“For Lantern contingencies.”
Of course.
Vincent had taken over one of Salvatore's fallback sites.
Federal authorities prepared quietly.
No dramatic raid.
No convoy.
Surveillance first.
That annoyed Matteo.
Which meant it was probably wise.
Two days passed.
I moved into a secure townhouse with my mother.
Awkward did not begin to describe it.
We cooked pasta.
Burned the sauce.
Argued about abandonment.
Then she told me everything.
She had planned to return after one year.
Then Vincent found her.
Salvatore protected her but insisted my continued ignorance was safest.
She accepted.
One year became five.
Then she became embedded inside Lantern trying to limit damage.
“You could have called.”
“I know.”
“You watched me graduate?”
“Yes.”
“You watched me start my company?”
“Yes.”
“You knew when I broke my wrist?”
She smiled sadly.
“You fell off a ladder.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
I cried.
She cried.
Then we hugged.
Healing was ugly.
Not cinematic.
The next morning Matteo arrived.
He looked at my swollen eyes.
“Bad night?”
“Family.”
He nodded immediately.
Understood.
He handed me coffee.
Correct order.
I noticed.
Did not comment.
“Federal team confirmed Vincent on the island.”
“How many people?”
“Unknown.”
“Hostages?”
Matteo hesitated.
“Possibly.”
“Who?”
He showed me a photograph.
Celeste's father.
Two former Lantern technicians.
And one little boy.
Eight years old.
Grant's son.
I stared.
“Grant has a son?”
“His ex-wife kept him out of this world.”
Vincent had found him anyway.
Matteo's face hardened.
“He's forcing Grant to come alone.”
“Grant knows?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
Matteo looked at me.
“Gone.”
Grant had disappeared thirty minutes earlier.
He left one note.
MY SON IS NOT PART OF THIS.
I understood the instinct.
I also understood the mistake.
“We go.”
Matteo shook his head.
“No.”
“You're learning too slowly.”
“Erin—”
“Vincent built his entire strategy around making people isolate themselves when frightened.”
Matteo stopped.
“Grant just did exactly what Vincent wanted.”
I grabbed my jacket.
“So we're not letting him do it alone.”
May you like
This time Matteo didn't argue.
We went after him.
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