Chapter 14 - THE BREACH PROTOCOL
"Do it, and you die right here," I said, squeezing the trigger guard of my carbine as I sighted directly between Sterling's eyes.
The two private guards reacted with blistering speed, snapping their weapons upward. But I wasn't aiming at Sterling anymore.
I whipped the barrel sideways and squeezed off a three-round burst directly into the overhead liquid-nitrogen cooling manifold suspended above the server racks.
CRACK-HISS-BOOM!
The heavy aluminum pipe shattered under the kinetic impact, instantly releasing a blinding torrent of pressurized, sub-zero liquid nitrogen across the server room. A massive cloud of dense white vapor exploded outward in a heartbeat, swallowing the laboratory in a freezing, impenetrable fog.
"Fire! Fire! Target is moving!" a guard shouted through the whiteout.
The laboratory erupted into deafening gunfire. High-velocity rounds chewed through server casings, shattering glass observation booths and sending sparks cascading down like fireflies in a storm.
I dropped flat onto the epoxy floor, rolling hard to the right beneath the cover of a massive mainframe rack as a hail of lead shredded the air inches above my head. The temperature in the room plummeted fifty degrees in seconds, frosting my tactical gear and stinging my exposed skin.
"Secure the perimeter! Don't let him reach the terminal!" Sterling's voice barked through the chaos, sounding panicked now as the automated fire-suppression sprinklers kicked on overhead, mixing water with the freezing mist.
Crawling on my stomach through the freezing slush and broken glass, I hauled myself up behind the central control console where Sterling had been standing moments before.
The primary display screen was flickering wildly, cycling through automated security lockdowns as the facility's AI tried to contain the structural breach.
I whipped out the secure data card from my tactical jacket, slammed it into the console’s master auxiliary port, and slapped my palm against the biometric override pad.
Access Denied: Bio-signature mismatch.
"Damn it!" I hissed, realizing the system was keyed to Sterling's specific genetic profile.
Footsteps crunched heavily on the glass-strewn floor to my left. A guard rounded the server rack, his rifle raised, hunting for my position through the blinding fog.
I didn't hesitate. I lunged upward from the console, grabbing the barrel of his rifle with my left hand and shoving it upward while driving the heel of my right hand square into his throat. The operative choked, his eyes rolling back as his knees buckled. I caught his falling body, stripped his tactical sidearm from its holster, and threw him hard against the sparking mainframe housing.
"Merrick!" Sterling’s voice echoed from the far side of the room, shouting over the screech of the alarms. "You can't outrun a black-site directive! The building is sealed!"
I looked down at the console. The data transfer progress bar was crawling forward at a agonizingly slow rate: 14%... 15%... 16%...
If Sterling’s team executed the facility purge, the entire subterranean lab would be flooded with Halon gas, suffocating anything breathing within ninety seconds.
I ripped the security guard's heavy comms headset off his helmet, jammed it over my own ears, and adjusted the frequency to broadcast across all internal security channels.
"All units, this is Commander Nathan Merrick," I spoke into the mic, my voice cold, calm, and carrying an absolute, unyielding authority. "Sub-Level 4 is compromised. The primary server core is venting high-pressure nitrogen. If you don't evacuate this bunker in the next sixty seconds, you aren't going to be capturing a fugitive—you're going to be freezing in a mass grave."
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For three agonizing seconds, dead silence answered me across the comms network.
Then, the heavy sound of boots retreating toward the emergency exit stairwells echoed through the floorboards. The guards were breaking formation. Self-preservation was overriding corporate loyalty.
