Chapter 7 - Inside the Vault
The second heavy shoulder-slam against the guest room door cracked the oak frame, sending splinters cascading across the Persian rug.
"Move! Move! Move!" Marcus yelled, his shoulder supporting Elizabeth's wheelchair as he wheeled her at top speed toward the walk-in wardrobe.
Robert scooped Sam up directly from the bed. The boy moaned softly, shivering violently under the heavy cashmere jacket, his eyes fluttering open with a hazy, unfocused glaze.
"Robert...?" Sam mumbled, clutching weakly at Robert’s shirt. "Where... where are we going?"
"You're safe, buddy. Just hold on to me," Robert whispered fiercely, carrying the sick child into the dark walk-in closet.
Marcus punched a numerical code into the biometric keypad beside the hidden steel door concealed behind a wall of built-in mahogany shelving. The mechanism hissed with hydraulic force, and a six-inch-thick vault door swung inward, revealing a compact, climate-controlled safe room equipped with emergency communications, medical supplies, and independent air filtration.
Robert laid Sam gently down on the narrow cot built into the wall, immediately covering him with extra wool blankets from the emergency shelf. Elizabeth maneuvered her wheelchair inside just as the outer bedroom door gave way with a deafening crash of splintering wood and sheared metal locks.
"They're in the room," Marcus whispered grimly. He stepped back, drawing his weapon again, and waited for the vault door's hydraulic timer to kick in.
"Marcus, get in here!" Robert shouted, reaching out to grab the security chief's tactical vest.
"The internal seal has to be engaged manually from this side, boss, or the pressure lock won't hold against thermal charges," Marcus replied, his face hard and resolute. "Get inside, Robert."
Before Robert could pull him through, heavy tactical footsteps stomped across the bedroom floor right outside the wardrobe. A man in matte-black gear, his face obscured by a balaclava and tactical goggles, rounded the corner of the shelving unit, leveling a short-barreled assault rifle directly at them.
Marcus didn't hesitate. He raised his Sig Sauer and fired twice, striking the intruder squarely in the tactical vest and sending him crashing backward out of the closet. But as the first man fell, two more appeared in the bedroom doorway, raising their weapons.
With a ferocious heave, Marcus slammed the heavy steel vault door shut just as a hail of bullets pinged harmlessly off its exterior face. He slammed his palm down on the master override lever, and with a heavy, final thunk, the hydraulic locking pins engaged, sealing them away in the dark.
Silence descended upon the vault, broken only by Sam’s ragged, wheezing breathing and the low hum of the emergency air purifier.
Elizabeth gripped the wheels of her chair, her knuckles white. "Are they going to be able to burn through this?"
"Not without industrial plasma torches, and even then, it'll take hours," Marcus said, sliding down the side of the steel wall and catching his breath. He tapped a secondary digital screen on the vault's internal control console. "The bad news is, they've jammed all external cellular signals. Our encrypted satellite link is the only way out, and it's routing through the main estate server in the basement."
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Robert turned away from the panel, walking over to the narrow cot where Sam lay tossing restlessly in a fever dream. He pressed the back of his hand against the boy's forehead; it felt like a furnace. The antibiotics Dr. Hayes had left behind were sitting out on the nightstand in the bedroom, completely out of reach.
"His fever is spiking dangerously high," Robert said, his voice laced with suppressed fury. "If we stay locked in here for hours waiting for help, the infection will kill him before Victoria Sterling's mercenaries ever get through that door."
