Chapter - 332
The wind howled around them, a mournful, lonely sound on the side of the mountain.
"Put the gun down, Nadia," Sharon said, her voice steady, though her eyes betrayed her shock. "We're almost out. We have the money. We have the win. Don't throw it away."
"We?" Nadia scoffed. "There is no 'we', Lieutenant. There's Rick, the superhero. There's you, the sidekick. And then there's . The victim. The baggage."
She gestured with the gun, signaling Rick to step away from the balloon pack containing the Laptop and the Cube.
"Move away from the package, Rick. Slowly."
Rick stepped back, his hands raised. He looked… disappointed. Not surprised. Just disappointed.
"You cut a deal," Rick said. It wasn't a question.
"Valerius," Nadia confird. "While you were playing chef, I was in the comms room. I didn't just upload the virus. I opened a private channel."
"He tried to kill us," Sharon argued. "He bombed the building!"
"He bombed Silas," Nadia corrected. "He wants the Laptop. He wants the Cube. And he offered twenty million dollars and a new identity in Singapore if I bring them to him. He has a drone inbound right now to pick up the beacon."
She looked at Rick. "Twenty million, Rick. And no Johnson looking over my shoulder. No Corporate Oversight. Just , and money."
"I have seven million in my account right now," Rick said. "I would have given you half. Hell, I would have bought you that island."
"You would have kept ," Nadia spat. "You would have made your… your pet. Your little project. 'Look at the con artist I saved.' I don't want to be saved, Rick. I want to be free."
She waved the gun. "Kick the case over to ."
Rick looked at the hardened case sitting in the snow. The one with the Laptop and the Precursor Core.
He looked at Nadia. "You know Valerius is going to kill you the second he has that case, right? He's a cyborg sociopath."
"He needs the encryption key," Nadia said. "Which is in my head. He needs alive. Unlike you."
She shifted her aim from Sharon to Rick.
"I liked you, Rick. I really did. The sex was… morable. And you have style. But you're too chaotic. You're going to burn out. And I don't want to be there when you explode."
"So you're just going to shoot us?" Sharon asked, her hand inching toward her SIG.
"Don't," Nadia warned. "I'm faster than you think. And I don't have to kill you. I just have to leave you here."
She pulled a small remote from her pocket.
"I re-rigged the blast door," she said, nodding to the tunnel exit behind them. "Valerius gave the codes. One press, and that door seals. It's magnetic. You'll be trapped on this ledge. The Chateau above is collapsing. The avalanche is coming. You'll be buried under a million tons of snow and rock."
"Cold," Rick said.
"Ice cold," Nadia agreed. "Now. The case."
Rick sighed. He kicked the case across the snow. It slid to her feet.
Nadia crouched, keeping the gun trained on them, and grabbed the handle. She stood up, backing toward the edge of the ridge where a dark shape—a silent, stealth extraction drone—was rising from the valley floor, its rotors humming.
"Goodbye, Rick," Nadia said. "Thanks for the ride."
She pressed the button on the remote.
CLANG-THUD.
The heavy steel blast door behind Rick and Sharon slamd shut. The locking bolts engaged with a sound like a gunshot.
They were trapped on a ledge, ten feet wide, with a sheer drop on one side and a sealed door on the other. Above them, the Chateau groaned as explosions rocked its foundations.
Nadia stepped onto the skid of the hovering drone. She looked back one last ti. Her eyes were hard, but there was a flicker of… sothing. Regret?
No. Just calculation.
"Sorry," she whispered.
The drone lifted off, carrying her, the Laptop, and the Cube away into the swirling snow.
Sharon ran to the edge, watching her disappear. She turned back to the door, pounding on it. "It's sealed! We're trapped! Rick, do sothing! Blow it!"
"I'm out of C4," Rick said calmly. He brushed snow off his shoulder.
"Then use the railgun! Use… use a laser! Do sothing!" Sharon was panicking. The mountain rumbled above them. A few rocks clattered down onto the ledge. "We're going to be buried!"
Rick walked to the edge of the cliff. He watched the red taillight of Nadia's drone fading into the distance.
He wasn't panicking. He wasn't screaming.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigar. He lit it with a windproof lighter, shielding the fla from the blizzard. He took a long drag, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke that mixed with the white snow.
"Rick!" Sharon scread, grabbing his lapels. "Did you hear ?! She took the loot! She took the data! And she left us to die! Why are you smoking?!"
Rick looked at her. He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a man who had read the script before the movie started.
"She didn't take the loot, Sharon," Rick said, ash falling from his cigar.
"I saw her! She has the case!"
"She has a case," Rick corrected. "She has a very nice, heavy case filled with five pounds of lead weights and a GPS tracker I bought for fifty bucks."
Sharon froze. "What?"
Rick tapped his temple. "I'm a Chaos Agent, Sharon. I don't trust anyone. Especially not a con artist who changed sides three tis in one week."
He reached into the air.
[Inventory: Access]
A shimr of light appeared. Rick reached into the void and pulled out… the Black Laptop.
Then he reached in again and pulled out the Obsidian Cube.
"I swapped them," Rick said, grinning through the cigar smoke. "Back in the vault. Sleight of hand. Level 17 dexterity is a beautiful thing."
Sharon stared at the items in his hands. Then she stared at the empty sky where Nadia had vanished.
"So… she stole…"
"A box of rocks," Rick finished. "And she's delivering it to a cyborg who is going to be very unhappy when he opens it."
He took another drag of the cigar.
"But that's not the best part," Rick said. "The best part is what I put in the fake case with the rocks."
"What?" Sharon whispered.
"You rember that Pandora's Box I showed you?" Rick asked. "The one that causes random chaos?"
"Yes..."
"I set the tir for ten minutes," Rick said. "Right about the ti she lands at Valerius's base."
Sharon started to laugh. It was a hysterical, breathless sound. She leaned against the cold rock wall, sliding down until she was sitting in the snow.
"You son of a bitch," she said, looking up at him with awe and terror. "You knew. You knew the whole ti."
"I suspected," Rick said. "Nadia is a scorpion. It's in her nature to sting. I just made sure she stung herself."
The mountain shook again. A massive boulder crashed onto the ledge a few feet away.
"Okay," Rick said, tossing the cigar over the cliff. "Smug satisfaction ti is over. We still need to get off this mountain before it falls on our heads."
"How?" Sharon asked, standing up. "The door is locked. We don't have the balloons. We don't have a drone."
Rick looked down the sheer, icy face of the mountain. It was a 45-degree slope of death, leading down into a dark forest thousands of feet below.
"I told you," Rick said, pulling two items from his Inventory.
He handed her a pair of high-tech, collapsible skis.
"We're skiing."
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