Chapter 3 - The Cipher on the Hard Drive
"Sir, the seal is freshly turned," Vance's voice echoed down the metallic shaft, sharp and urgent. "The plate has been accessed from the inside."
Above me, the heavy thud of combat boots multiplied. Kane must have joined them.
"Impossible," Kane’s voice snapped back, laced with disbelief and a sudden edge of panic. "The water pressure alone would have crushed her ribs before she reached the intake flange. She’s food for the sharks by now."
"Check the cylinder cache," Vance ordered.
I didn't have time to hesitate. My multi-tool’s data-probe bit into the wiring harness of the communications conduit, bypassing the ship's firewall with a pre-programmed NCIS bypass script. The tiny LED screen on my wrist unit flickered to life, streaming a cascading waterfall of encrypted data files straight from the Resolute’s core database into my portable drive.
Files, manifests, transfer logs—and a series of private communications between Kane and an unidentified civilian contractor operating out of a black-site port in the Philippine Sea.
File 04-B: Project Chimera.
My breath caught. Project Chimera wasn't a standard arms shipment. It was an illegal off-books transfer of experimental chemical agents disguised as conventional high-explosive ordnance. That was why the cylinder had carried the warning: They are still here. It wasn't about missing gear. It referred to human test subjects locked deeper inside the ship's forgotten compartments.
“Download incomplete: 74%,” the tiny screen blinked silently.
"Sir! We've got an unauthorized data-tap on the primary conduit!" a panicked voice shouted from the bridge communications deck above. "Someone is siphoning core logs directly through the junction line!"
"Lock down all bulkheads!" Kane roared, his voice echoing through the entire steel skeleton of the ship like thunder. "Seal Deck Four! Nobody leaves this level alive!"
Heavy pneumatic seals hissed with terrifying violence as massive steel blast doors slammed shut across the corridors, cutting off my exit route in both directions. The red emergency klaxons began to spin, bathing the dark engineering bay in strobing crimson light.
I ripped the data-probe from the console just as the download hit 91%.
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Footsteps rushed toward my position from both ends of the trench. I was trapped in a hundred-foot steel corridor with nowhere to run, and the blast doors were locking down tight.
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