Chapter 34 - Extraction Vector
Ethan slowly lifted his head. The despair in his aristocratic blue eyes didn't vanish, but it crystallized into something harder—something borrowed from the woman standing before him.
"I'm coming with you," he said, pushing himself off the wall. "I'm not letting Clara die because of my blindness."
Naomi inspected him for a long beat. "If you come, you obey every order without question. In the field, you are not Lord Whitmore. You are secondary baggage. If I tell you to jump, you jump. If I tell you to shoot, you empty the magazine. Understand?"
"Understood," Ethan replied firmly.
Naomi unlocked a munitions crate, pulling out a light ballistic vest and tossing it onto his chest. "Put it on under your coat. And take this." She handed him a suppressed Sig Sauer P226. "Keep the safety on until you have a target within ten yards. Don't play hero."
She turned to the primary terminal on the desk. Inserting a small data-jack from her pocket into the terminal, she bypassed the external network completely, tapping into an obsolete military relay. The screen flickered with encrypted green text, scrolling rapidly through satellite imagery of the Atlantic and Western Europe.
"The VTOL that took Clara is heading toward an offshore platform in the North Sea," Naomi muttered, analyzing the telemetry. "They aren't taking her directly to London. They're staging her on a decommissioned oil rig—Platform Echo-Seven. Vanessa’s father, Marcus Sterling, uses it as a private interrogation hub."
"Why not take her straight to London?" Ethan asked, fastening the tactical vest around his bruised ribs.
"Because Marcus Sterling wants to confirm the data-key's existence before the summit begins," Naomi answered, her fingers flying across the keys. "They think Clara might have a duplicate key or know where Julian hid the secondary archives. They'll question her there until dusk, then fly her to the summit at the ExCeL Center in London to use as leverage against the remaining Council members."
"How long will she survive their questioning?" Ethan’s voice cracked slightly.
Naomi looked at him, her expression completely flat. "Four hours. Five if she stays silent. Marcus Sterling's interrogators don't use patience; they use chemical neurotoxins."
She shut the laptop down with a snap, grabbed two tactical duffel bags, and threw them into the trunk of the armored Aston Martin.
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"We leave now," Naomi said, sliding into the driver’s seat. "The tunnel exits onto a private farm road four miles south of the estate perimeter. If the Division has air surveillance, we have about thirty minutes before their drones reacquire our heat signature."
Ethan climbed into the passenger seat, his fingers white on the frame of the Sig Sauer. "Let's go get my sister."
