Free Web NovelChapter 136: Chapter 136: You’re On Stream
James stood in the shadow of the pillar and started the stream.
He did not announce it. There was no title, no countdown, no message to the audience. He simply opened his own broadcast the way he had over Floor 15, set the feed running, and angled it so the lens looked out across the level — the ramp where the cars would come down, the service lift at the far wall, and the open stretch of concrete between them where a handoff would happen.
Then he went still, the leader’s phone in one hand, and waited.
The viewers found it within seconds. They always did.
[SeoulRaidBoard]: wait is this James Ganner’s stream?? why is it a car park
[DubFloorWatch]: no system window. no floor. where is this
[GuildAnalyst_44]: That’s not a Tower. That’s an underground garage.
[TRBWatcher]: is this a mistake? did he leave the stream on by accident
[LondonTowerWatch]: those are real cameras on the ceiling. someone read the pillar markings — B2
[Anon]: ASHFORD GRAND. that’s the Ashford Grand’s parking. the lift doors give it away
The chat moved faster than anyone could read it, full of guesses, and James answered none of them. He kept the angle where it was. He wanted them watching. He wanted them watching before the men came down, so that nothing they did could be cut or denied later.
He was not here only to put them in the ground.
He was here to do it where the whole world could see why.
A low hum rolled down the ramp.
Vrmm.
The first car came down slow and stopped near the service lift, exactly where he had thought it would.
The broker got out with a cigarette already lit and a coat hung over his shoulders, gold watch catching the cold light. He checked the time, looked toward the ramp, and exhaled smoke through his teeth.
"They’re late," he said to no one.
Then the second car came down. Then the third. They spread into a loose formation behind the broker, and the doors opened one after another, and the men who stepped out moved like they had come expecting trouble and did not mind it. freewebnøvel.coɱ
The broker did not so much as glance at them.
That told James everything. The extra cars were not a surprise. They were the plan.
[DubFloorWatch]: who’s the rich guy with the cigarette
[GuildAnalyst_44]: That’s a lot of muscle for a man who looks that relaxed.
The fourth door opened, and a man in a formal grey coat stepped out.
James knew him on sight.
William Langford. The same polished representative who had waited outside Hale Estate with a government seal on his card and a UK transfer contract in his pocket. He stepped onto the concrete, looked around the level with visible distaste, and pulled his coat straight like the place had personally offended him.
Then the fifth door opened.
And James’s uncle got out.
He came out of the car the way he came out of everything, like the ground belonged to him because his name was on enough of it. There was no nerves in him. If anything he looked pleased, the look of a man whose night was finally going the way he had wanted it to go for a long time.
James’s jaw set, but he did not move.
[SeoulRaidBoard]: who are these two
[GuildAnalyst_44]: The grey coat — I’ve seen him in TRB political coverage. Give me a second.
[LondonTowerWatch]: the older one came out of a Ganner Corp car. look at the plate fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
[TRBWatcher]: why would Ganner Corp be at a hotel handoff at this hour
The chat started slow. Then it started to build.
The broker dropped his cigarette and crushed it under a polished shoe.
"Where’s the woman?" he said.
One of his own men walked toward the service lift, where a bound, covered shape lay on the floor in the cold light. He crouched, lifted the edge of the sheet, looked under it for half a second, and let it fall.
"She’s here," the man said. "Secured."
The broker nodded like that closed the matter. He did not walk over. He did not check it himself. He had come expecting hired men to deliver property, and the property was on the floor where property went, and that was the end of his interest in it.
It was not James’s mother under the sheet. She was three miles away in her own bed with a winged child guarding the door. The shape on the concrete was a thing James had wrapped and left there to be believed, and they believed it, because they had never once imagined the job had not gone exactly the way they paid for it to go.
Langford looked at the covered shape and let a small smile cross his face.
"Well," he said. "That should make the boy reconsider."
James’s uncle laughed.
"It’s the best thing that could have happened," he said. "He’s needed to be taught a lesson for years. Maybe now he’ll remember whose name he carries."
[DubFloorWatch]: did. did they just say a woman is secured
[GuildAnalyst_44]: That grey coat is William Langford. UK Tower delegation. Confirmed.
[Anon]: SOMEONE GET TRB ON THIS RIGHT NOW
[LondonTowerWatch]: are we watching a kidnapping handoff live
Langford took out a phone and made a call.
"You can send the message," he said into it, calm and unhurried. "His mother is secured. He’s to be told that if he wants her released safely, he reconsiders the offer." A pause. "Use the proper language. National interest. Relocation. A matter of his family’s safety and his own future. Nothing he can quote out of context."
He never once said the word that would have made it plain.
James’s uncle leaned in close enough to be heard.
"Tell him fear is the only thing the boy understands," he said. "He grew too fast and forgot who let him exist. A frightened man signs what you put in front of him."
The chat broke open.
[SeoulRaidBoard]: THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT JAMES GANNER. that’s his mother
[TRBWatcher]: England tried to recruit him weeks ago. it was in the reports. and now THIS
[GuildAnalyst_44]: The older man is a Ganner Corp board member. James’s own family.
[DubFloorWatch]: they kidnapped his mum to force him to defect. i’m going to be sick
[Anon]: clip everything. CLIP EVERYTHING. they’ll scrub this
James stayed where he was.
He let them keep talking.
His uncle was too comfortable now. He thought the room was theirs, the night was theirs, the boy was already beaten. Comfortable men said things they should not.
"It’s all moving," he told Langford, lower now, the voice of business. "The prototype’s nearly there. We’ll have a working unit ready inside the month."
Langford’s interest sharpened. "And the Irish side? They’ll make noise."
"Let them." The uncle waved his good hand. "We have the right people in the right offices. Procurement stalls. The board keeps O’Shea chasing his own tail on procedure. Our friends in government argue national security and proper channels until the thing is built and there’s nothing left to argue about." He smiled. "By the time anyone moves, it’s done."
Langford allowed himself a thin smile of his own.
"The King will be very pleased," he said, "if your weapon performs the way you keep promising it will."
And the stream stopped being about one woman.
[GuildAnalyst_44]: They have planted people inside TRB. They just SAID it.
[TRBWatcher]: a WEAPON. for England. built by Ganner Corp. to bury Ireland’s tower position
[LondonTowerWatch]: this is treason. this is actual treason on a live feed
[DubFloorWatch]: TAG O’SHEA. TAG THE BUREAU. TAG EVERYONE
The numbers on the feed climbed in a way James did not bother to read.
Across the city, at the Tower Regulatory Bureau, O’Shea was still at his desk.
Niamh came in without knocking and turned her phone toward him.
"You need to see this," she said. "Now."
O’Shea watched it without a word. The garage. The cars. The covered shape. Langford. The Ganner Corp man he half-recognized.
Then he heard the part about the right people in the right offices, and the board keeping him chasing procedure, and friends in government stalling until it was too late.
His face changed.
He understood it all at once — why the board had dragged its feet on three separate decisions this month, why the English offer had been waved through as harmless, why every bit of pressure around the Ganner boy had moved so smoothly and met so little friction.
His hand came down on the desk.
BANG.
The glass over the desk blotter split in a long crack.
"So that’s why the board kept stalling," O’Shea said. His voice was very quiet and very level, which was worse than shouting.
Niamh already had her own phone to her ear, moving for the door.
"Security. Legal. Get me the names we still trust," she said into it. "All of them. Tonight."
Back in B2, James’s uncle’s phone rang.
He answered it with a snap of irritation, annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his good night. "What."
His secretary’s voice came through fast and thin, panicked enough that the men nearest to him heard the pitch of it.
"You’re on stream."
The uncle frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"You’re live. Right now. On James Ganner’s stream. The whole thing. People are—"
He lowered the phone slowly from his ear.
His face drained of color from the top down.
Langford caught the change at once. "What is it. What happened?"
The uncle did not answer. He turned in a slow circle, looking now at the things he had not looked at when he walked in — the camera domes in the ceiling, the rows of pillars, the deep shadows between the cold lights.
The broker’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth with a fresh cigarette in it.
The men around the cars went still, then started turning, heads moving, hands drifting toward their coats, eyes searching the pillars one by one.
[SeoulRaidBoard]: THEY KNOW
[DubFloorWatch]: THEY JUST REALIZED OH MY GOD
[GuildAnalyst_44]: He had them on camera the entire time.
James stepped out from behind the pillar.
He did not shout. He did not rush them. He walked out into the cold light where the lens could see him and where they could see him, and he let them.
Langford’s face went tight and pale.
His uncle’s reaction was worse, because for the uncle this was not policy anymore. The boy he had wanted to frighten and own was standing in the middle of the trap with the whole world watching over his shoulder, and there was nothing official about the look on his nephew’s face.
The broker recovered first, the way men who bought and sold things for a living always tried to.
"Now — let’s everyone be calm," the broker said, lifting one hand. "Whatever this looks like, it can be explained. It can be handled. There’s a number that fixes—"
James did not look at him.
His eyes stayed on his uncle and on Langford, and he spoke once, and not loudly.
"You touched my home."
That was all of it.
He raised one hand.
The air beside him darkened and pulled in on itself, and two shapes came up out of it.
The Dark Knight rose first. Black armor, cracked and scorched along the seams, the great sword held low at her side. She made no sound. There was no prayer in her now, no voice, no call for Mother. There was only a dead thing in a dead woman’s armor, waiting.
The reanimated wolf came up beside her, bones glowing faint under its hide, eyes lit with cold green light, standing as still as only the dead stood still.
Langford took a step back into the side of the car.
"What," he said. "What the hell is that—"
James gave the command.
[GRAVE COMMAND ACTIVATED]
[COMMAND: ADVANCE]
The Dark Knight moved.
