Chapter 10 - The Trigger and the Vault
The heavy silence in the underground corridor became suffocating. Marcus stared down at the black barrel of the pistol pressed barely two feet from his heart, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
"Uncle Julian... please," Marcus whimpered, falling to his knees on the rubber floor. "I gave you everything. I signed the transfer papers, I abandoned my wife—don't do this."
"Sentimentality is a luxury for survivors, Marcus, and you were always a liability," Julian replied coldly, his finger tightening against the trigger.
In a fraction of a second, before Julian could fire, Arthur Sterling lunged forward, tackling the elderly patriarch hard against the concrete wall. The silenced pistol discharged with a dull thip, the bullet burying itself harmlessly into the rubber ceiling tiles.
"Get the door open, Elena!" Arthur shouted, struggling violently with Julian as the two older men rolled across the floor in a brutal, desperate scramble for the weapon.
I didn't hesitate. I threw myself against the electronic keypad of the vault, my fingers flying over the numbers. But the screen flashed red: ACCESS DENIED.
"Marcus! The code!" I screamed, turning back toward my husband, who was still frozen in shock on the floor.
"I don't know it! Julian never gave me the master PIN!" Marcus cried out, cowering as the sounds of struggle echoed off the walls.
Behind us, heavy footsteps pounded up the concrete stairs from the service loading dock. More armed guards were rushing down to secure the level. We had seconds before we were completely trapped.
I looked down at Marcus’s trembling hands, then at the encrypted burner phone Arthur had handed me upstairs. A wild, desperate idea flashed through my mind. I grabbed the burner, pulled out the extraction cable, and jammed it directly into the diagnostic port of the vault’s electronic keypad.
Override sequence initiated, the screen blinked yellow.
"Come on, come on..." I muttered under my breath, watching the security bar crawl across the tiny LED screen.
Arthur grunted, throwing a heavy punch that knocked Julian back against the wall, but the patriarch quickly recovered, drawing a secondary blade from his belt and slashing it across Arthur’s arm. Arthur cried out, stumbling backward against the steel door.
"Elena! Look out!" Arthur screamed.
Julian scrambled to his feet, wiping blood from his lip, and raised the knife toward my back as I stood defenseless in front of the keypad.
Suddenly, with a loud, pneumatic hiss, the heavy steel door of the underground vault unlocked itself, swinging inward into the dark pharmaceutical chamber.
May you like
And from inside the darkened room, a small, sleepy voice called out:
"Mommy?"
