Chapter 38 - Race Against the Clock
"We need to get out of here, right now," Arthur said, his face tightening into a mask of pure tactical urgency. He jammed a manual override battery directly into the door's auxiliary port.
HISS.
The heavy steel blast doors slowly groaned upward, revealing the gray, rain-drenched coastal landscape outside. Without wasting a single second, we bolted back to the Land Rover, tearing down the winding gravel road toward the military airstrip where our Gulfstream was idling on standby.
During the flight across the Atlantic, the digital landscape on our secure terminals was a war zone.
Thomas Vance had breached the central firewall of Vale Meridian Tower using the backdoor credentials embedded in the Azores proxy server. He was attempting to transfer our entire proprietary medical patent portfolio—including the groundbreaking cellular regeneration formulas—to an anonymous offshore holding account controlled by the remnants of the Thorne syndicate.
"🌿 If he hits the final transfer confirmation before we touch down in New York, Vale Meridian loses everything," Arthur said, his fingers flying across the satellite terminal. "Our stock, our assets, our legal standing—wiped clean in thirty seconds."
"He won't make it," I said, staring out the cabin window as the sprawling lights of the New York skyline began to pierce through the nocturnal fog.
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We weren't just fighting for a company anymore. We were fighting for the legacy of every child whose life we had saved, and every promise I had made beside that quiet stream in Connecticut.
When the jet touched down at Teterboro Airport, a secure corporate chopper was already waiting with rotor-blades spinning on the tarmac to ferry us directly to the rooftop helipad of Vale Meridian Tower.
