Chapter 5 - The Unknown Sender
The glowing screen in my palm pulsed with the incoming call icon, the caller ID displaying only a stark, unblinking sequence of zeroes.
Around us, the grand ballroom was descending into total institutional chaos. Agent Miller and her team were escorting my parents and Celia toward the service corridor away from the fleeing guests, while Julian stood beside me, his eyes locked on my phone screen with undisguised apprehension.
“Don't answer it,” Julian said quietly, his hand hovering near my wrist. “If Celia’s network is compromised, whatever is coming through that feed isn't a random call. It’s a trigger.”
“If I don't answer it, they win,” I muttered, my thumb swiping across the screen to accept the secure transmission.
The video feed blinked twice, static clearing into a high-definition dashboard view. It wasn't a live person on the other end. It was an automated data stream—a live-feed mirror of my own apartment’s smart-security interface back in Charleston.
On the screen, my living room appeared in crisp, night-vision monochrome.
And standing directly in front of my biometric wall safe was a figure dressed in all black, their face obscured by a tactical balaclava, calmly entering a six-digit override code into the keypad.
My breath hitched. That safe contained every single physical backup, every unredacted digital ledger, and every classified archival folder I had pulled over the last three weeks—including the original confession implicating my father and the structural fraud documents destroying Celia’s career.
“Nora?” Julian leaned in, his eyes widening as he caught sight of the video feed on my phone. “What is that? Who’s in your apartment?”
Before I could reply, the keypad on the screen flashed a brilliant, solid green.
The heavy steel door of the safe swung outward on its hydraulic hinges.
The intruder didn't reach inside to steal the files. Instead, they reached into a tactical pouch at their waist, pulled out a small, compact device with blinking red LED lights, and tossed it casually onto the stack of classified manila folders resting on the top shelf.
A thermal-detonation breaching charge.
On the bottom corner of the video feed, a digital countdown timer flashed into existence:
03:45… 03:44… 03:43…
“Nora!” Julian shouted, grabbing my arm with sudden, desperate urgency. “That’s not a standard break-in. That’s a remote professional sanitization. They’re erasing everything.”
Up near the service corridor, Celia caught sight of my expression over the shoulder of the CID agent escorting her away. Even with her hands cuffed behind her back, my sister threw her head back and let out a sharp, chilling laugh that echoed off the crystal chandeliers.
“You thought you were the only auditor in the family, Nora?” Celia called out over the commotion, her voice dripping with venomous triumph as she was shoved through the heavy double doors. “Some files aren't meant to be reviewed. Enjoy the fallout!”
The countdown timer on my phone screen clicked downward into the final two minutes.
01:59… 01:58…
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Julian grabbed my car keys from my blazer pocket without asking, his eyes blazing with urgent resolve.
“Run,” Julian said, pulling me toward the side exit as the alarms in the grand ballroom began to wail a deafening, automated warning. “If we don't get to Charleston in the next ninety minutes, everything we have on them—and everything we are—goes up in smoke.”
