Geneva. Quai du Mont-Blanc.
The private elevator down to the thirty-two meter descent was in such utter silence that all Manning could hear was her pulse thrum somewhere against those walls of titanium. Every floor drops two degrees lower; by the time the doors slid open, her breath fogged.
Vault 47B was at the end of a corridor cut from Jurassic limestone and lit by sodium lamps that turned everything to a dried blood hue. A brass plaque read:
Société Anonyme de Dépôt Privé - Est. 1873.
Below had been bolted new steel lettering:
PHOENIX PHASE ZERO ARCHIVE - LEVEL 7 CLEARANCE ONLY.
Two guards waited, Swiss, ex-military, submachine guns loose and resting calmly. Their eyes moved up to Manning's splinted wrist, lingered on Xu Xiao's Glock-print line under his coat, and dismissed both. Money had already spoken; the guards only listened.
They stood between the vault door and the retinal scanner-a matte-black cylinder, the size of a washing-machine drum. Xu Xiao took out the tablet; Keller's extracted biometric was glowing on the screen. He held it to the scanner. A soft chime. A seam appeared in the stone, widening to a man-high aperture that exhaled chilled air and a faint smell of ozone.
Inside: a single room five meters square, walls lined with lead and copper mesh. The center held a pedestal with a transparent cube-acrylic thick as a fist-in which floated an object no bigger than a matchbox. It was matte black with edges that were bevelled, a single copper contact strip along that one side. No lights or ports and no markings save for an etch of a microscopic phoenix near the strip.
Manning's throat went dry. "That's it?" "That's half of it," Xu Xia said. "The other half is in your blood."
He took an ultra sterile lancet from the duffel, pricked her index finger, allowing a bead of crimson to well. He touched the drop to the copper strip. The cube pulsed once soft amber; then, the matchbox split along an invisible seam, petals unfolding as an origami flower. Inside lay a wafer of synthetic diamond, clear, save for a single flaw: a spiral of data at the atomic level has been etched.
Xu Xiao slid the wafer into a titanium reader no larger than a credit card. The reader's screen lit:
PHOENIX CORE v.0.9.7 - BOOT SEQ ACTIVE
A progress bar crawled across the display-monitors ran 1 percent, 3 percent, 7 percent-standing out surprisingly amid tiny LEDs along the edge of the reader strobed green.
Manning leaned in closer. "What happens at one hundred?" "The algorithm wakes up. Then it asks for the passphrase your mother never gave us." • 09:17 a.m. Progress: 34% Footsteps in precise cadence echoed within the corridor-the kind too light to belong to guards. Xu Xiao's hand shifted to his lower back. Manning heard the soft click of a safety. A woman emerged around the corner. Tailored charcoal suit, silver-blond hair, and pale blue eyes, the color of glacier melt. She carried no weapon—only a slim tablet identical to Xu Xiao's. "Hello, nephew," she said. "Aunt Wen," came the unflinching face of Xu Xiao.
Chairwoman Xu Wen—triad of Nine emeritus, twin of Xu Xiao's mother, and the woman who signed the order nineteen years ago to sink the car of the Shen family. Smiling, the scalpel of her expression slashed. "I see you found the toy." She moved on with her glance to Manning. "And the spare key."
Manning's hand moved over the Glock stained at her waistband. Wen's look was amused at the action. "Shoot me and the vault seals for a decade. The algorithm only responds to living Xu blood."
Xu Xiao said nothing. "You were supposed to be in Macau." "I was. Then someone opened a vault I paid to keep closed." She raised her tablet. On it, the same progress bar synchronizing with theirs—34%. "Remote tether. I've been watching since Keller scanned your mother."
Manning suddenly felt ice crawling down her spine. "You let us come here." "I needed the blood." Wen stepped closer. "And I wanted to see if my nephew had finally learned to betray without hesitation."
"I learned from the best."
09:21 AM Progress: 47%
Wen produced a small remote-black, unmarked. Press b—ehind the guards, the corridor lights snapped to emergency red. Steel shutters slammed across the vault entrance like a guillotine. The guards spun, rifles rising, then froze—Wen's other hand held a second remote, thumb poised above a red stud.
"Dead-man switch," she said pleasantly. "One twitch and the room floods with halon. We all suffocate in ninety seconds." She looked to Xu Xiao. "Give me the wafer."
He didn't flinch. "You'll kill us anyway." "Perhaps. But you'll die knowing your mother's name was erased from every database on earth. Or you can live long enough to watch me rewrite history."
Manning's finger stiffened around the Glock's trigger. The muzzle swung between Wen and the reading device. 52%. 54%.
Wen's grin widened. "Tick-tock, kids.'
09:24 AM Progress: 66%
Xu Xiao didn't look at Manning as he uttered, "When I say three, shoot the reader." "What?" was Manning's wide-eyed answer. "One."
Wen's eyes narrowed. "You won't." "Two." Manning swung the Glock, squeezed. The shot was a flat crack inside the lead-lined room. The titanium reader exploded in a burst of sparks and diamond dust. The wafer skittered across the floor, spinning like a coin. Progress bar froze at 71%, then winked out.
Wen's face went white. "You—"
Xu Xiao lunged. Not at Wen—at the vault wall. His shoulder slammed a concealed panel; it popped open revealing a second reader, smaller, already glowing. Scooped the wafer, slid it home. New screen:
PHOENIX CORE v.0.9.7 – BACKUP BOOT – 100%
The vault lights strobed crimson. Somewhere behind the walls, turbines whirred.
Manning kept the Glock trained on Wen. "Backup?" she asked, voice shaking. "Always." Xu Xiao's grin was feral. "My father built redundancies. My aunt forgot to read the footnotes."
09:26 AM. The vault ceiling unfolded like an iris. A projector beam hung in the air to paint holographic data—streams of green code spiralling upwards forming the phoenix crest in three dimensions. Wen stared transfixed.
"Congratulations," said Xu Xiao. "You just funded the end of your own empire."
The hologram froze. A single line appeared. PHOENIX ONLINE. ENTER PASSPHRASE. Below, a blinking cursor.
Manning looked at Wen. "You know it?" Wen's lips parted—then her eyes rolled back. A soft thud as she hit the floor. Behind her, one of the guards lowered a tranq pistol. The other spoke into a wrist mic: "Package secure. Exfil in four."
Xu Xiao froze. "Who the hell are you?"
The guard removed his balaclava. There was Shen Yu's face staring back—Manning's twin brother, scarred, eyes sharp. "Family reunion," he said. "Now let's finish what our fathers started."
The cursor blinked, waiting.
09:27:05. Five hours and thirty-three minutes left to burn the sky.