Chapter 19 - The Copy Already at Sea
Cade was arrested.
The hostages survived.
The original chip remained secure.
But during interrogation, Cade laughed when investigators celebrated.
“You think Vance built only one?”
Meridian created three copies.
One went to Eleanor.
One went to Cade.
The third was installed aboard an active American destroyer as a hidden test.
The vessel was USS Hamilton.
It was currently leading an allied exercise in the North Atlantic.
If Meridian activated the chip, it could override navigation, targeting, and communications.
An entire battle group could be turned against itself.
The activation window opened in twelve hours.
Naval command ordered the Hamilton isolated.
Its captain refused to surrender control without proof.
Captain Owen Mercer had served under me years earlier.
He trusted my judgment.
I contacted him over a secure channel.
“Clarissa?”
“The navigation architecture may be compromised.”
“We ran every diagnostic.”
“The chip sits below the diagnostic layer.”
“How do I find it?”
I guided his engineers to the weapons coordination bus.
They located an unauthorized module.
Before they could remove it, all systems aboard Hamilton went dark.
Meridian activated the copy.
The destroyer changed course toward the allied fleet.
Its missile systems began arming.
Remote commands did not respond.
Captain Mercer’s voice returned through an emergency radio.
“We have manual steering, but the weapons network is locked.”
The Navy asked whether the original chip could transmit a shutdown command.
Arthur, recovering under guard in the hospital, confirmed it could.
But only through a Vance Maritime uplink facility located beneath the family headquarters.
Federal agents controlled the building.
Yet the uplink required Arthur’s retinal scan and Eleanor’s voice authorization.
Both were prisoners.
They would have to cooperate.
Eleanor refused.
“Let the fleet see what your precious Navy built,” she said.
Arthur looked at me.
“She will never help willingly.”
I remembered the recordings from childhood.
Eleanor’s voice existed in thousands of family videos.
The system required real-time cadence, not merely a recording.
Audrey could imitate her perfectly.
She had spent her life becoming our mother.
Audrey stared at the authorization terminal.
“If I do this, will they still prosecute me?”
“Yes,” I said.
She swallowed.
May you like
“Then at least I’ll do one thing that isn’t for myself.”
📖 Audrey became the only person capable of stopping the hijacked destroyer, but the system would expose whether she had secretly remained loyal to Eleanor. 👇
