Page 362 of Scars of Fate

Lucas moved closer to the radio.

“Can the duplicate sequence disable the Geneva device?”

“Not by itself.”

“What else do we need?”

“Aegis.”

Leyla’s father had created Aegis as protection against the biological agents connected to Fate.

“What exactly is Aegis?” I asked.

“A defense protocol. Dr. Arslan built it to shut down any active deployment used against civilian populations.”

“How do we activate it?”

“I don’t know.”

The countdown reached twenty-seven minutes.

I remembered Leyla’s face when I said the name.

Aegis wasn’t merely a project to her.

It was her father’s legacy.

I grabbed the radio.

“Contact Leyla.”

Adam transmitted over Colonel Demir’s secure frequency.

Static answered.

Then Leyla’s voice.

“My team is inside the hangar. We stabilized the agent.”

“Dr. Demir, we need the Aegis authorization.”

Silence followed.

“How do you know about that?”

“Your father built a shutdown command into Fate. How do we activate it?”

“You can’t.”

“Why?”

“The command was divided between Fate’s two encryption levels.”

Hawk looked toward the terminal.

“We have both.”

“The original files were taken,” Leyla said.