“Ten.” The digitized voice grated through the receiver. Kasen sat motionless, leather gloves white-knuckled against the steering wheel beneath the halogen glare. Phelan Gault’s gray irises tracked her through the windshield with calculated precision. “Neva,” Kasen spoke flatly across the link. “He wants the feed open. Hold your ground.” Phelan chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. “A gamble, Kasen? With your life? I assure you, my dear boy, I never bluff when the stakes are so delightfully high.” He pressed the muzzle harder, a faint *thwack* against the glass. Neva’s internal clock was already ticking, far faster than the artificial countdown. Her gaze flickered to the crate Phelan was standing beside – one of the *real* ones, packed with Dassein’s proprietary neural interface units. Each one contained EMP safeguards, designed to protect the delicate circuitry from hostile interference, a failsafe against industrial sabotage. A failsafe that, with the right activation sequence, could be weaponized. “Neva, nine.” She ignored Kasen, ignored the frantic pleas Tamsin was now broadcasting from a discreet perch in a nearby cargo container. Instead, Neva pulled the door handle. “Stop,” she murmured over the line, pitching her tone upward. “Don’t move, Kasen.” She pushed the door open, stepping out into the harsh glare of the halogens. She raised her palms into the salt-laced wind. A bright, dimpled grin took shape across her mouth—the identical vacant simper she had served across breakfast linen to Olenna Trask for three years. “Dr. Gault!” Neva’s voice carried, sweet and clear, across the tarmac. “Oh, goodness, you caught me! I suppose I’m simply not cut out for all this… corporate espionage, am I? Too many moving parts!” She gave a small, self-deprecating giggle, a performance honed over years. Phelan’s mouth twitched. He tilted the muzzle away from the driver’s window. “My dear Neva. Always the dramatist. But a surrender is a surrender. Enter the sequence.” “Eight.” Neva dragged her soles along the tarmac, letting her ankles wobble. “Oh, goodness, not pragmatism! Kasen simply refuses to take directions, and I couldn't bear another mess tonight.” She looked down at her feet, as if embarrassed. “It’s all just so much, isn’t it? Being CEO, and all the… brain things.” “The cipher,” Phelan prompted, his tone losing its casual edge. He gestured to the terminal screen on the crate, a small, recessed panel that glowed faintly. “Input it.” “Of course, of course.” Neva scurried to the crate, her movements a parody of a harried assistant. Her fingers, steady enough to clip a basilar aneurysm under twenty-power magnification, deliberately slipped against the capacitive glass. “Seven.” “It’s just so many digits,” she chirped, tilting her chin up. “Are you certain it isn't Dr. Gault's birthdate? I always scramble the hexadecimals.” Phelan's grip on the grip tightened. “Neva. Six.” Her grin stayed pinned in place. “Entering it now, then.” Her gaze scanned the digital keypad. The Dassein master cipher was a complex, adaptive encryption. What she was about to input was something far simpler, a code she’d buried in the system’s deep architecture years ago as a last-resort kill switch: the ‘Overload Protocol’ for the EMP safeguards. With a final, exaggerated sigh, Neva’s thumbs danced across the interface. One sequence. Two. Three. She tapped the confirmation square with a flourish, then looked up at Phelan. “There. All done.” “Five.” Phelan leaned in, his eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the terminal screen. A green indicator locked solid on the bezel. Phelan straightened, shoulders relaxing. “Remarkable, Neva. Truly remarkable. Now we secure the transport.” He began to raise the sidearm again, this time aiming at Neva herself. “You know, I almost believed you for a moment there.” But before the gun could fully level, a high-pitched whine ripped through the air. A blinding flash erupted from the crate, followed by a series of popping sounds that echoed across the docks. Everywhere, the hum of machinery sputtered. The overhead lights flickered violently, then settled into a dim, orange glow. The screens on Phelan’s henchmen’s communication devices went dark. The sidearm in Phelan’s hand sparked, blue static running along the slide before the firing module fused shut. Weapons clattered to the ground as the mercenaries, startled, found their own firearms useless slugs of metal. “Oh, dear,” Neva said, her voice dropping an octave into razor-clean clarity. “A capacitor breach.” Phelan drew back his arm, teeth bared. His hand went to his inner jacket pocket, a glint of polished metal. A hidden blade, thin and wickedly sharp, sprang into his grasp. He lunged, a desperate, animalistic cry tearing from his throat, aiming for her chest. Neva shifted on her right heel, pivoting two inches clear of the descending steel. As Phelan pitched forward, she drove the rigid edge of her palm directly into the anterior triangle of his neck, driving through the brachial trunk. Phelan exhaled sharply as his fingers went limp. The steel clinked against asphalt; his knees gave out beneath his weight. He lay on his side against the curb, unable to fire the motor neurons to lift his chin. Harbor authority cruisers swept through the security perimeter, emergency beacons painting the stacked shipping crates in amber and blue. Kasen and Tamsin, now free from immediate threat, were already out of the van, coordinating the arrests of Phelan’s stunned mercenaries. Neva stood over Phelan, her chest rising and falling evenly. “A sound surgeon plans for tissue resistance, Dr. Gault,” she murmured, looking down at him. “A line of firmware severs cleanly enough.” Behind them, Tamsin called out over the engine noise: “Neva! Over here!” Neva spun around. Gerrick Trask lay crumpled beside an empty shipping pallet, his left shoulder twitching involuntarily while his pupils dilated to black rings. His skin was ashen, slick with cold sweat. A thin trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth. Kasen pressed two fingers under Gerrick’s jawline. Tamsin knelt across from him, shining a penlight across Gerrick's retinas. “Autonomic dysregulation,” Tamsin said. “The shunt gave out. His respiratory center is destabilizing. Without neuro-regeneration, he won't make sunrise.” Neva walked over and looked down at the man who had tossed her wedding ring across a marble foyer. His survival hinged on the Dassein biocell matrix—patented under her maiden name, calibrated by her hands alone.

The Overload Protocol