Chapter 6 - The Glass Fortress
The service elevator climbed in agonizing silence, the cables groaning softly as the counterweights passed in the shaft.
Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Forty.
Larkin reached out and hit the emergency brake lever at the forty-first floor. The car halted with a gentle shudder.
"The forty-second floor will be covered by their rear guard," Larkin whispered, his back pressed against the elevator wall, weapon held at the low ready. "We take the fire stairs, clear the mechanical corridor, and hit them while they're focused on the vault door."
"There are six men on the primary floor," I whispered back, pulling up the thermal camera feed on my phone, which I had bridged to the building’s internal environmental sensors. "Four clustered at the vault entrance. One patrolling the executive kitchen. One stationed directly inside your office."
"The one in my office dies first," Larkin said, his voice dropping to a merciless whisper. "Nobody sits in my chair."
We slipped through the heavy fire door into the stairwell. The air was frigid; the HVAC system had been shut off to prevent fire suppression gas from deploying during the breach. My bare feet made zero sound against the concrete steps as we climbed toward the forty-second floor.
The door to the executive suite was cracked open an inch. Through the gap, the rhythmic, high-pitched whining of a rotary diamond drill echoed off the polished hardwood floors. They were attempting to core through the secondary lock housing.
Larkin held up three fingers.
Two.
One.
He kicked the door open with a thunderous bang and swept into the corridor like a phantom.
The guard stationed near the kitchen turned, his rifle coming up, but Larkin’s suppressed pistol coughed twice. Phut. Phut. Two rounds struck the man’s center mass, dropping him silently onto the Persian runner before he could make a sound.
At the end of the hall, near the massive steel vault door, the three men working the drill spun around, shouting in Italian.
Gunfire erupted.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the dark office, shattering the decorative glass partitions into thousands of raining crystal shards. Bullets chewed through the drywall, kicking up plumes of white plaster dust.
Larkin pulled me behind a solid oak pillar, returning fire with measured, deadly accuracy. A second intruder fell, clutching his shattered shoulder as he collapsed behind a leather sofa.
"I need access to my desk!" I shouted over the deafening cracks of gunfire.
"It's twenty yards across an open kill-zone!" Larkin barked, firing three rounds to suppress the remaining two shooters pinned behind the reception island. "You won't make it!"
"The server protocol is timing out!" I yelled back, showing him the red countdown on my phone. "If the handshake doesn't complete in ninety seconds, the internal logic board fries itself and seals the vault permanently! Everything inside will be destroyed!"
Larkin looked from the countdown to the hail of gunfire tearing through his executive foyer.
He didn't hesitate.
"On my mark," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling a tactical flashbang grenade he had lifted from the guard on the balcony. "Run like hell."
He pulled the pin with his teeth. He cooked it for one second, then banked it off the ceiling marble toward the reception desk.
"Mark!"
BANG.
A blinding white sphere of concussive force exploded through the room, accompanied by an ear-shattering roar that blew out the remaining decorative glass.
I broke from cover instantly.
I didn't run like an accountant; I moved low, agile, and fast, sliding across the slick hardwood floor on my knees, ignoring the jagged shards of glass biting into the hem of my ruined four-thousand-dollar silk gown.
I rounded the corner of my cubicle, tore open the lower drawer of the metal filing cabinet, and reached into the hollow space behind the ventilation grate.
My fingers found the cold aluminum chassis of my shadow server.
I ripped the emergency USB dongle from around my neck, jammed it into the primary port, and slammed my palm onto the red override switch.
Across the room, the high-security vault door gave a deep, hydraulic groan.
The heavy locking bolts retracted with a series of massive, mechanical thuds that shook the floorboards. Clank. Clank. Clank.
"System verified," an automated synthetic voice chimed over the office intercom. "Welcome, Administrator Woods."
From behind the shattered reception desk, the remaining Marcone enforcer staggered to his feet, dazed, his ears bleeding from the flashbang, his shotgun leveled straight at my back.
"Die, you bitch," he snarled.
Before he could pull the trigger, Larkin stepped out from the smoke behind him.
He didn't use a bullet.
Larkin grabbed the man by the hair, dragged his head backward, and slammed his throat down across the edge of the marble reception counter with the force of an anvil.
The sound of cartilage snapping was final. The man dropped to the floor, motionless.
Larkin stood over the bodies, his chest heaving, his tuxedo shredded, his knuckles coated in crimson. Plaster dust fell like gray snow through the moonlight streaming through the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows.
Slowly, his eyes crossed the ruined room and found me sitting on the floor among the scattered spreadsheets, clutching my laptop like a shield.
He walked over to my desk, stepping over the broken glass, until he stopped directly in front of me.
May you like
He offered me his hand.
"Good work, Miss Woods," he breathed, his voice raw, hoarse, and shaking with an emotion he could no longer hide. "Your overtime has been approved."
