Seventy Hours on Raener-12 : Part 18 (Ending)

Hour 070

I was still blinded by Ty's sacrifice, still on sensory and emotional overload, when the bridge came into blue focus.

The three of us panted deeply. I watched Natalie weave a path around rows of consoles. She was coughing fervently. The vacant room felt intimidating. Large holographic monitors were at their cardinal spots on the walls. Rows of consoles and desks tiered down like an amphitheater to a sunken flat command center, where the Vertigo elite had once sat. Beyond the tools and monitors were the windows. We had backtracked up the slanted ship to reach the room, and were high enough to look out at the gray sky and mounting snow in the dark. The vista reminded me of what we were preventing, of what we had to save...

I quickly recomposed myself, blocked out the death of a hero, and focused on severing the security systems to disarm the bombs. Home was so close.

Natalie had worked her way around the funnel-like levels of desks and stopped at a screen.

"Sean!"

I jogged with Collin to her spot and stared at the monitor while I took off my helmet. The interface could not have been more concise. The console displayed a reset screen ready for use. Natalie quickly thought of a new registration code and password. I wasn't convinced.

"Should it be this simple?"

"The system was completely overridden after you rebooted it. No old passwords are kept. It's a very effective way of protecting data. The system is acting faultlessly."

Her keystrokes were blazing fast. Menus and layers of information piled on screen and my princess finally halted at a display full of options. The title read:

Security Override Successful
Emergency Measures Activated
Countdown Initialized - 00:09:49

I saw the numbers on-screen heralding nine minutes and forty-eight seconds...nine minutes and forty-seven seconds...

What?

Then it all connected.

Son of a bitch.

Natalie grasped the betrayal as quickly as I had. I saw treachery boil behind the princess's eyes.

"The bombs. No, they couldn't--"