Chapter 669 314: Revenge

The liquid inside remained clear, but on a microscopic level, the expensive molecular chains were breaking apart, dying.

...

Pfizer Headquarters.

A panoramic glass elevator was suspended between the fortieth and forty-first floors.

Just a few minutes ago, Pfizer's CEO and several members of the board had been preparing to go to the revolving restaurant on the top floor for lunch.

Now, they were trapped in this transparent iron cage.

The air conditioning stopped.

The afternoon sun beat directly into the glass car, instantly turning it into an experiment in the greenhouse effect.

The temperature was rising rapidly.

"What the hell is going on?"

The CEO, Anderson, tugged at his tie as beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

He pressed the emergency call button. There was no response.

"Phones? Call security!"

A board member beside him pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen.

"No signal."

The board member's face was pale.

"Looks like the cell towers are down, too."

In the cramped space, the air began to grow stale.

The carbon dioxide exhaled by the six adults mixed with their body odor. Combined with the rising temperature, the car became a suffocating sauna.

Anderson stripped off his bespoke suit jacket and threw it on the floor.

His shirt was soon soaked with sweat, clinging to his body and revealing his paunch.

His usual debonair and calculating demeanor vanished in an instant.

"Goddamn power company!"

Anderson pounded on the glass door with his fist.

"I'm going to sue them! I'll make them pay for this!"

He looked down.

Through the glass floor, he could see the employees below scurrying around like ants.

The entire building had gone dark.

Fear began to spread through the elevator car.

'If the power doesn't come back on... if rescuers can't reach us... will we suffocate in here?'

"Water..."

An older board member felt a wave of dizziness and leaned against the wall, gasping.

"I need some water."

There was no water.

Only the acrid smell of cologne evaporating in the heat.

These titans—who controlled the lifeblood of All of America's pharmaceuticals and held the lives of countless people in their hands—were now trapped like sardines waiting for slaughter, stuck in an iron box suspended in mid-air, sweating, cursing, and terrified.

For the first time, they felt utterly and completely helpless.

...

Delaware. The United Health Group data processing center.

The chaos here was even worse than in New Jersey.

This was the digital brain of the entire health insurance Empire.

Thousands of servers ran day and night, processing insurance claims, prescription approvals, and transfer orders from across All of America.

But now, that brain was dead.

The main power was cut, the backup power failed to engage, and the cooling systems shut down.

Within minutes, the temperature inside the server room soared to ninety degrees Celsius.

To protect the hardware, the servers initiated an automatic shutdown protocol.

Rows of indicator lights blinked out.

The immense hum vanished, leaving only the CLICK... CLICK... CLICK of hard drives spinning down.

The call center.

Five hundred customer service representatives sat at their stations, staring at their dark computer screens, completely at a loss.

But the phones were ringing off the hook.

The calls were complaints, coming in over traditional PSTN lines.

A young representative answered a call.

"United Health customer service."

"My wife's surgery is about to start!" an anxious man's voice shouted over the line. "The doctor says they can't find her pre-authorization in the system! If they can't confirm it, they're going to cancel the surgery! What the hell is wrong with you people?"

The representative stared at the blank screen, helpless.

"Sir, I'm very sorry. Our system is... currently experiencing some technical difficulties."

"Technical difficulties?!"

The man's voice rose to a roar.

"We've paid our premiums for ten years! My wife is on the operating table right now, and you're telling me you have 'technical difficulties'? Are you trying to stiff us? I'll sue you, you hear me? I'll sue you!"

"Sir, please calm down..."

"Calm down my ass! My wife is crying right here! The doctor is waiting! You look her up right now! Her social security number is..."

"I'm sorry, sir."

The representative's voice cracked, on the verge of tears.

"I can't look it up."

"We're... We're paralyzed."

The same conversation was happening at every single station.

Pharmacies, unable to verify insurance, refused to dispense medication.

Hospitals, unable to confirm coverage, refused to admit patients.

Even ongoing telehealth appointments were disconnected by the network failure.

The entire medical payment system of the East Coast suffered a massive myocardial infarction, all because of the shutdown of one data center in Delaware.

Millions of transactions were frozen mid-process.

Billions of US Dollars in capital flow were frozen.

The digital fortress the insurance giants were so proud of proved as fragile as paper in the face of a simple power outage.

...

Audubon. The PJM Control Center.

O'Connor stared at the main screen.

Across the East Coast, the green dots of light were blinking out, one after another.

New Jersey, Delaware, Washington... One by one, they turned red.

But on the other side of the map, in Western Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh region still shone with a steady green light.

The producers had light.

The plunderers were plunged into darkness.

"Well done."

Sterling watched the screen, a smile playing on his lips.

"They thought they could control everything. They thought they could use capital and the law to wrap us around their little finger."

"But they seem to have forgotten that, at the end of the day, the world is built on the laws of physics."

"Without electricity, their servers are just scrap metal, their labs are just refrigerators, and their offices are just saunas."

Sterling clapped O'Connor on the shoulder.

"Keep it like this."

"If they call, tell them we're doing everything we can to make repairs."

"Tell them the molten steel in Pittsburgh hasn't been poured yet. We can't shut down."

"Let them wait."

"And how long do they wait?" O'Connor asked.

"Until they learn to respect real industry."

Sterling replied, then turned and walked out of the control room.

O'Connor sat in his chair, watching the red zones on the map.

He knew that by morning, the entire United States would be in an uproar over the blackout.

The stock market would plummet, the media would be in a frenzy, and Congress would launch an investigation.

But he no longer cared.

Right now, looking at the map so clearly divided between light and darkness, he felt a surprising sense of satisfaction.

Leo Wallace had done it.

He had made those high-and-mighty bastards taste what it was like to wait in the dark.

'Pittsburgh caught a cold,' O'Connor muttered.

'And now All of America has to take the medicine.'