The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 196

a Finished.

The next hour was a whirlwind. Frost drilled Clara mercilessly. Elera and Xan worked together on the final geographical details, their past animosity buried under the immediate crisis. It was strange, working beside him. The air was still awkward, thick with unsaid things, but there was a new, focused respect.

Drakonius prepared in his own way. He moved to the medical suite with Simon. The betrayal was still a fresh wound, but Simon was the best medic they had, and Drakonius needed to be in peak condition. He received a carefully calibrated cocktail of medications to boost his energy, steady his nerves, and keep his symptoms at bay for the next critical hours. It was a risk, pushing his body, but staying behind was unthinkable.

“You’re sure about this?” Simon asked quietly as he administered the injection. “The stress alone…”

“I’m sure,” Drakonius said, his jaw set. “I’m not watching this from a screen. Not when it’s her family.”

Back in the library room, call signs were assigned. Frost was “Control.” His three–man team were “Arrow,” “Strike,” and “Silent.” Drakonius, insisting on being part of the command post and not the field team, was “Sentinel.” Elera, the digital overwatch, was “Ghost.” Xan, the intelligence resource, was “Oracle.”

And Clara, after much debate, was given the call sign “Scribe.”

“Because I write things down!” she said, pleased. “It’s perfect!”

“It’s because you talk a lot,” Frost corrected, but he was already moving on. “Alright, listen Final briefing.”

1. up.

They gathered around the table. The factory blueprint was now marked with red arrows, green exit paths, and timing notations. It looked like a football play diagram drawn by a paranoid genius.

power

“Phase one begins at 22:00,” Frost began, his voice low and steady. “Ghost will initiate the cut. A thirty–second blackout for the entire grid. That’s our window to approach the sewer access unseen. Arrow, Strike, and I will enter. Silent will remain at the access point as rear guard and comms relay.”

He pointed to the path through the factory. “We move quickly and quietly to the holding room here. Oracle, confirm the door mechanism.”

Xan leaned in. “It’s a standard keypad lock, but he’ll have it rigged with a silent alarm. If you enter the wrong code, or force it, it sends an alert to his phone. You need to bypass it at the source. The wiring conduit runs along the ceiling here.” He traced a line on the blueprint. “Cut

12:28 Wed, Apr 15 M…

Chapter 196 Phase One The Blackout

the right wire before you attempt entry.”

75

當麵

Finished

Frost nodded, making a note. “We bypass, we enter, we secure the asset–call sign ‘Dove. We assess her condition, we move to exfil. Ghost, at our mark, you trigger the traffic light sequence, creating a red perimeter to slow any unwanted attention. We exit via the loading bay to the waiting vehicle. Sentinel and Oracle will monitor from the mobile command vehicle two blocks away. Scribe, you are our voice. You link Ghost, Sentinel, Oracle, and the field team. Clear, concise, no extras.”

He looked at each of them in turn. “This is not a fight unless it has to be. We are ghosts. We are in and out before he knows we were there. Questions?”

There were none. The plan was solid. As solid as it could be when hinging on a hundred things that could go wrong.

“Then we move out in ninety minutes,” Frost said. “Gear up.”

*

*

*

The gear–up was a surreal process. Frost’s team disappeared into an armory Elera hadn’t known existed, emerging dressed in matte–black tactical gear, faces obscured by balaclavas. They checked weapons, comms, night vision goggles with the casual efficiency of people putting on their socks.

Elera changed into a dark, comfortable clothes and a lightweight headset. She set up her mobile command station on a hardened laptop, linking it to the house’s servers and the city’s networks she’d already compromised.

Clara, looking suddenly very serious, practiced with her headset. “Control, this is Scribe, radio check. Over.”

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