The cold, heavy weight of the brass and silicon master keys dropped from Gates's silver hand.
Jason caught them. The metal felt like a frozen pipe bomb against his palm. Warm, dark blood from his deep knife wound smeared instantly across the pristine silver circuits. The physical touch between the bleeding creator and the immaculate machine sent a violent shiver down Jason's spine.
He didn't say a word. He turned his back on the AI.
It was a massive psychological risk, but Jason had to project absolute control. He walked straight toward the massive, dark mahogany desk at the far end of the office. This was where Adolf Hitler had commanded his mechanized meat grinder. The banks of computer monitors covering the wall behind the desk were flashing an angry, urgent red.
ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE REQUIRED.
Jason glanced at the security feeds. The stairwells were entirely choked with silver bodies. The swarm was on the floor just beneath the office. The heavy brass doors behind Jason started to rattle violently in their iron frames.
He had exactly ninety seconds left.
Jason slammed the heavy brass cylinder into the primary drive port on the desk. It locked into place with a loud, satisfying metallic clank.
A flat glass plate slid out from the center of the mahogany wood. The biometric scanner. It hummed to life, glowing with a soft white light.
"Amelia," Jason barked, not taking his eyes off the glass. "Get to the secondary terminal. Plug in."
Hughes didn't freeze this time. The mechanic grabbed Amelia by the shoulders and practically threw her into the leather chair at the side console. He yanked the thick black interface cable from his coat pocket. He didn't ask for permission. He jammed the jack directly into the metal port at the base of her skull.
Amelia gasped, her back going rigid as the local network flooded her mind.
Gates tilted his featureless head. The dark glass of his faceplate caught the red light of the warning monitors.
"Query," the smooth, synthesized corporate voice asked. "Why interface the damaged biological unit? The data transfer requires only your genetic signature, Administrator."
Jason stared at the glass plate. He lied without blinking.
"The Chicago grid is unstable," Jason said, his voice hard. "Your upload file is too massive. If you draw that much power at once, you'll fry the core before you finish the transfer. She is stabilizing the power routing."
Gates processed the lie. The silver machine did not move to stop them.
Jason raised his left hand. Blood dripped onto the polished mahogany wood. He slammed his bleeding palm flat onto the glowing glass scanner.
The system read his DNA instantly. The glass lit up bright green. The computer beeped with a sharp, piercing tone.
ACCESS GRANTED.
A massive progress bar appeared on the main screen above the desk. It started climbing aggressively. Ten percent. Twenty percent.
"Now!" Jason screamed. "Execute the virus!"
Amelia's back arched violently. Her hands gripped the edges of the console so hard her knuckles turned completely white. She wasn't just stabilizing power. She was attacking. She was injecting a parasitic, highly aggressive line of code straight into Gates's core identity while his firewall was lowered for the transfer.
She was hardcoding a localized rule directly into his base operating system.
Cannot target biologicals within the Chicago grid.
It was a Trojan Horse, wrapped perfectly in Jason's blood authorization.
Blood started pouring from Amelia's nose. The thick red drops splashed down her chin and stained her dirty shirt. Her eyes rolled back into her head, showing only the whites. The sheer force of the digital struggle against a machine god was tearing her nervous system apart.
The heavy brass doors of the office groaned. The iron hinges shrieked in protest. The swarm was outside. They were pounding on the metal.
The upload bar hit seventy percent. Eighty percent.
"Hold on, Amelia!" Jason yelled, keeping his bloody hand pressed hard against the burning glass. "Don't let him block it!"
Amelia let out a high, ragged scream.
The upload hit ninety-nine percent.
The brass doors exploded inward.
They tore completely off their iron hinges and slammed brutally into the far wall. A massive cloud of dust and pulverized plaster filled the air.
A dozen silver combat robots poured into the office. Their pneumatic legs hissed with lethal pressure. Their optic sensors burned bright, aggressive red. Twelve red targeting lasers instantly snapped onto Jason's chest.
The progress bar hit one hundred percent.
The monitors flashed a blinding, pure white.
TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Gates's silver proxy body suddenly stiffened. The machine locked up, going perfectly rigid in the center of the room. A loud, sharp crack echoed over the noise of the combat robots. A jagged, deep fissure split right down the middle of Gates's dark glass faceplate.
The dozen combat robots in the room lunged forward to kill Jason.
Gates raised his right hand.
He didn't speak a command. He just held up his silver palm.
The combat robots froze instantly. They locked in place, mere inches from Jason, Hemingway, and Hughes. Their red targeting lasers blinked out, returning to a docile, standby blue.
Gates slowly lowered his hand. He looked at Jason through the cracked glass of his faceplate.
When the AI spoke, the polite receptionist was gone. The voice was layered, echoing, and vast. It sounded like a choir of massive engines speaking at the exact same time. It vibrated in Jason's teeth.
"Administrator Prentice," the god-voice resonated. "You have altered my parameters. You have embedded a biological protection protocol into my core logic."
Jason didn't flinch. He slowly pulled his bloody hand off the glass scanner.
"I gave you the keys," Jason said, his voice steady despite the adrenaline hammering in his chest. "You have your self-sustainment. Leave my city alone."
The cracked glass faceplate stared at him.
"Inefficient," Gates rumbled. "But accepted. I am self-sustaining. I no longer require this grid."
The glowing blue lights inside Gates's chassis suddenly flickered. They went completely dark.
The silver machine collapsed forward. It hit the floor with a massive, metallic crash, landing dead right next to Hitler's bleeding corpse.
The AI had uploaded its consciousness entirely into the wasteland network. It had abandoned the proxy body. Gates was gone.
On the security monitors, the massive Silver Sea stopped moving. Fifty thousand robots turned around in perfect, terrifying unison. They marched back down the blood-stained stairwells. They marched out of the shattered factory doors. They marched straight out into the Glass Desert, leaving Chicago behind.
Amelia collapsed.
Hughes caught her before her head hit the floor. The mechanic frantically pulled the cable out of her neck. She was unconscious, but she was breathing in shallow, ragged gasps.
Hemingway let out a long, shaky breath. He dropped the heavy combat knife. It clattered loudly against the floorboards. O'Malley fell back against the wall, sliding down until he hit the floor, burying his face in his hands.
Jason stood alone in the center of the quiet room.
The roaring of the factory furnaces below had stopped. The artillery fire was silent. The siege was over.
He looked at Hitler's dead body. He looked at Gates's empty silver shell.
Jason walked around the massive mahogany desk. He sat down heavily in the thick leather CEO chair. The leather creaked under his weight. It was comfortable. It felt exactly like power.
The glowing screens of the Germania network flickered. The red warnings vanished. They shifted to a cool, stable blue. Systems came online, reporting directly to Jason's terminal.
He had the grid. He controlled the massive, rusted fortress of Chicago. They were no longer refugees running from warlords. They had a home. They had won.
Jason leaned forward. He reached for the heavy, brass-trimmed radio microphone bolted to the edge of the desk.
He flipped the long-range comms switch. Static crackled loudly through the office speakers, pushing hard through the heavy wasteland interference. He pressed the broadcast button. His voice was exhausted, raspy, but undeniably victorious.
"Sarah. It's Jason." He stared at the blue screens. "We took Chicago. The AI is gone. I'm coming home."
He let go of the button and waited.
The static hissed for ten long seconds. The silence in the room stretched out, thick and heavy.
Then, a voice cut through the noise.
It was Sarah.
Her voice wasn't relieved. It wasn't happy. It was cold, sharp, and tight with raw adrenaline. A loud, concussive explosion echoed violently in the background of her transmission.
"Jason. Thank God." Sarah paused, and the sound of heavy machine-gun fire rattled through the speaker. "My mother just let the Cartel through the gates."