Chapter 5 - The Siege
We barely made it back to the estate before the alarms started. The power went out, and the night was sliced by the sound of gunfire. This wasn't a corporate takeover; it was an execution.
"Get to the panic room," Arthur ordered, pushing me toward the hallway.
"No," I said, grabbing his arm. "The key. The trust access. If I upload it to the public servers, the Syndicate’s assets are frozen. Their influence dies."
"That will take ten minutes at the terminal," Arthur said. "We don't have ten minutes."
"We do if we fight."
I moved through the dark hallways, the training I’d endured over the last few months kicking in. I moved through the shadows, knowing the layout better than the intruders did. I took out a guard with a taser I’d hidden in my clutch, retrieved his keycard, and reached the master terminal.
May you like
My fingers flew across the keyboard. The Syndicate’s accounts, their dirty money, their shell corporations—it was all there, mapped out. I hit ENTER.
The sound of the house screaming to life—sirens, lights, locking mechanisms—was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard. Outside, the police, alerted by the data dump, swarmed the gates.
