Chapter 18
The bulletproof glass case housing the Velvet Frontline’s master server node was locked down, a heavy titanium shutter beginning to descend to protect the hardware. Clara slid across the slick marble floor, jamming the reinforced barrel of a discarded submachine gun beneath the descending shutter, halting it with a horrific grinding of metal gears.
She crawled under the gap, finding herself face-to-face with the glowing, monolithic server rack that controlled the syndicate's global operations. She pulled a specialized military decryption drive from her clutch—a device David had designed for exactly this purpose. She jammed it into the primary administrative port.
The screen above the server flashed red, demanding biometric authorization. Clara didn't have Volkov's handprint, but she had something better. She typed a rapid sequence of override codes she had memorized from the viet chuyen ledger, bypassing the physical security protocols and injecting David’s ultimate failsafe directly into the system.
"System purge initiated," the automated voice chimed, echoing in the confined space.
On the balcony above, Elias was laying down heavy covering fire, keeping the responding waves of estate security pinned down in the corridors. "Major! We have heavily armored response teams breaching the main doors! We have ninety seconds before we are overrun!"
"The purge is at sixty percent!" Clara yelled back, watching the progress bar crawl across the screen. The logic bomb was doing more than erasing the drone AI; it was systematically formatting the Velvet Frontline’s entire financial architecture, wiping billions of dollars in untraceable crypto-assets and burning their blackmail ledgers to ash.
Suddenly, a heavy boot kicked the submachine gun out from under the titanium shutter. The heavy metal door slammed down, trapping Clara inside the glass case with the server. She spun around to see Victor Volkov standing on the other side of the glass, a bruised and bloody smile on his face. He held a remote detonator in his hand.
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"If I lose the data, Clara," Volkov screamed through the reinforced glass, "I make sure you burn with it. The server case is rigged with thermite."
Clara looked at the progress bar. Ninety-five percent. She didn't panic. She raised her pistol, aiming directly at the micro-fracture in the bulletproof glass caused by the shutter's violent descent, and emptied her entire magazine into the exact same spot.
