Three hundred wealthy guests watched a maid stop Vanessa’s attack with one hand, never realizing the woman in the gray uniform had once been trained to dismantle dangerous threats. / Chapter 72 / 130

Chapter 72 - Free Fall into the White Hell

The transport screamed through the freezing troposphere, shedding altitude at an alarming rate. Naomi fought the sluggish manual hydraulics, her shoulder muscles straining beneath the torn fabric of her gray uniform. The interceptors remained locked onto their thermal signature, circling above like vultures waiting for a carcass to hit the ice.

"They're painting us with secondary tracking radar," Ethan called out, pulling himself back up into the copilot's station. He flipped open the auxiliary power bus, restoring basic analog flight instruments. "The engines are overheating. The cold air intake is choking on ice crystals."

"Let them lock," Naomi said, her gaze fixed entirely on the altimeter unwinding through five thousand feet. Below them, the Arctic Ocean was not water, but a jagged, splintered wasteland of permanent pack ice, fractured by black abyssal fissures. "Vanessa thinks this machine is her weapon. She forgets it’s a glider if the turbines die."

Through the radio’s emergency frequency, Vanessa’s voice cut in again, higher pitched now, laced with manic satisfaction. "You have five seconds before the secondary interceptor fires a thermobaric payload. Give me the transmission frequency for the Apex vault, Ethan. Step over her corpse, hand over the key, and you might survive to see tomorrow."

Ethan looked at Naomi. The quiet, indomitable composure on her face showed no trace of panic. It was the same stillness she had possessed when she deflected Vanessa's kick in the Whitmore ballroom—an absolute, unshakeable dominion over violence.

"I’d rather hit the ice," Ethan spoke directly into the open mic.

"Then freeze together," Vanessa spat.

The interceptor above dropped lower, its weapons bay doors sliding open. Naomi slammed both fuel cutoff valves simultaneously.

The twin turbine engines extinguished in an instant. The massive roar died into the hollow, whistling rush of wind. With no thermal plume to guide the missile, the radar-guided ordnance shot blind into the blinding snow, detonating uselessly against an iceberg a mile offshore.

The transport shuddered as it plunged into free fall, diving nose-first into the white void.