Chapter 5 - The Turning PointBefore Marcus’s fingers could clear leather, my training took over. Years of reacting to split-second crises in emergency rooms—where hesitation meant the difference between life and death—hardwired my reflexes.
I didn't shoot a gun; I threw the heavy cast-iron brass paperweight I had clutched the entire way down the elevator.
Clang!
The dense iron struck Marcus’s wrist dead-center with bone-rattling force, knocking his pistol violently off-target. The shot he fired went wide, punching a hole straight into the concrete ceiling and showering us in white dust and debris.
Adrien didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. Two rapid, deafening gunshots echoed through the narrow sub-basement.
Marcus staggered backward, clutching his shoulder and his knee, before collapsing hard against the server rack, sliding down into a heap of groaning agony. The portable laptop slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the floor.
Silence rushed back into the server room, broken only by the hum of the electronic cooling fans and the smell of cordite.
Adrien lowered his weapon slightly, keeping his sights trained on Marcus as he stepped forward and kicked the fallen laptop away across the concrete. He reached down, snatched the portable data drive from Marcus’s jacket pocket, and slid it into his own trousers.
Marcus spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor, glaring up at us with pure, unadulterated hatred. “You... you think this stops with me? The board... the board knows everything. Even if you kill me, the files are already uploaded to an off-site drop.”
“Then it’s a good thing,” Adrien said smoothly, his voice dropping an octave, “that my technical team monitors every outbound IP address tied to this estate in real-time. Your off-site drop was intercepted and quarantined ten minutes ago, Marcus.”
Marcus’s eyes widened in sudden, absolute terror. The bravado vanished, leaving only a broken man staring into the abyss of his own failure.
Adrien turned his head, looking over at me standing by the shadow of the server rack. The adrenaline was finally beginning to ebb, leaving my legs trembling slightly and my chest aching from the residual tension.
“Are you hit?” Adrien asked, his tone shifting instantly from lethal enforcer to something startlingly tender.
May you like
“No,” I exhaled, leaning back against the cool metal of the server casing. “Just... ready to get out of this basement.”
Adrien nodded once, pulled out his encrypted comms unit, and signaled the loyal perimeter guards to clean up the mess. Within five minutes, Marcus Vance was dragged away into the dark, silent bowels of the estate, never to be seen in Chicago again.
