Chapter 5: Barcode Judgment Day
The glass walls of the Diamond Mansion refracted the morning light into the bars of his cage, and Ethan's movement to adjust his tie awakened the barcode tattoo under his collarbone. In the elevator mirror, he saw the bite mark Luna had left on the side of his neck seventy-two hours ago transforming with the flow of blood into Morse code: e-t-h-a-n.
The smell of Nathan's favorite Cuban cigar wafted through the boardroom, mixed with the sweet aroma of something rotten-a faded specimen of lily of the valley from Luna's wedding bouquet, now framed in the margins of the front page of the Wall Street Journal: the Vanderlinde Group stock price had fallen below the offering price.
"Surprise party?" Nathan's gold teeth crunched into his cigar, "With a raggedy patent your mom dug up from the grave..." He suddenly coughed so violently that the diamond-encrusted cufflinks rolled to Ethan's feet, their surface reflecting the laser-red dots pulsing from the ceiling.
Ethan unbuttoned the third button of his shirt, the barcode awakening in the sunlight filtering through the bulletproof glass. Projected beams suddenly pierced the haze, magnifying the pattern under his collarbone into a laser cage that enveloped the room. Each stripe played out a different incriminating evidence: darknet trading, organ smuggling, securities fraud... The faces of the shareholders fell apart in the stream of data.
"Now vote." Ethan inserted the probate chip into the conference table, and a virtual image of Margaret descended from the holographic projection. Her pregnant belly transparent as a crystal ball, the sound of her fetal heartbeat resonating with the NASDAQ opening bell." Those in favor of the takeover please breathe."
Luna's heels sounded like a guillotine guillotine falling. She pushed her champagne cart in style, her fishtail hem stained with crystals of Chelsea Piers' frozen liquid." Father, you taught me..." She pulled out the lead seal of her Margarita Vintage Champagne, "... It's most delicious before the bubble bursts."
Nathan burst into flames, the Colt Python's aim aimed at Luna's brow, "Bitch! Those frozen embryos..." It was the champagne bottle that the bullet shattered, the golden liquid splashing against the probate chip, activating a destruction program that had been buried fifteen years deep.
"Game over." Margaret's false image suddenly reached out and penetrated Nathan's chest, and the electronic screens across New York went black at that moment. When the light resurfaced, the Dow Jones index morphed into her long, flowing hair, each number a momentary reorganization of Ethan's trampled childhood.
Nathan fell to his knees, gold teeth slipping from the corners of his slack mouth. Luna stepped on bullet casings, the hem of her skirt ripping to reveal barcodes on her inner thighs - a mirror image of Ethan's tattoos." Mother was right..." She pressed Nathan's head against the landing, "... The real currency is the thrill of revenge."
Sirens sounded from forty floors below and Ethan's spreadsheet began to count down. He turned to see Luna standing at the edge of the shattered glass façade, the cold wind from Chelsea Piers lifting her blood-stained skirt." Now you're coming to be the savior?" Her laughter mingled with the hiss of a siren, "Like in that cheap hero play in the fire?"
The blockchain key suddenly exploded in Ethan's retinas as he read the final directive hidden in Luna's tattoo: the true legacy of Margaret Tech was not money, but an AI virus powerful enough to paralyze the global financial system. The sound of the countdown to zero at this moment was the same as the heartbeat monitor in the maternity ward twenty years ago.
"Choose." Luna leaned back, the sapphire pendant detaching from her necklace and tracing a parabola through the air, "Be Margaret's good son..." Her body began to fall free, "... Or grab the remains of your filthy love."
Ethan's hand lunged into the void to grab the pendant, and the sapphire prisms suddenly projected a dying image of his mother. Margaret smiles from the exploding yacht, "The true throne..." Blood flows from the corner of her forehead in an encrypted algorithm, "... Was forged from what you buried with your own hands."
The moment the security air cushion expands beneath Luna, Ethan crushes the sapphire. Nanobots poured out of the shards and climbed into a giant golden web along the Diamond Building's facade. When the SWAT team crashed through the doors of the conference room, all they saw was the shimmering blockchain dust all over the floor and the final declaration projected over New York:
The new gods have arrived, the old coins should be burned.