Chapter 5 - The Price of TruthThe monitors flickered back to normal as Victor Vance cut the local feed from the library terminal. Upstairs, the heavy thud of boots retreating toward the north exit echoed through the ventilation shafts.
Dominic slammed his fist against the concrete wall beside the breaker box, a rare crack in his iron composure. “He used the breach as a diversion to get into the private archive. Vance has the ledger.”
“Which means,” Hannah said, her mind racing past the immediate danger to the larger geopolitical war playing out across the city, “he now has the legal leverage to seize control of every legitimate shipping port from Chicago to Montreal. If those routing codes are made public or decrypted by a rival syndicate, the entire regional infrastructure collapses into a cartel war.”
Dominic turned to her, his jaw set in a hard line. “We have to intercept him before he clears the perimeter gates. My transport is parked in the underground motor pool. Are you coming, or are you staying here where it’s safe?”
Hannah didn't hesitate. She reached down, pulling a heavy wrench from a maintenance toolkit on the shelf and gripping it tightly in her bandaged hand. “Safe is an illusion, Mr. Moretti. Let’s go get your ledger back.”
They moved up the concrete stairs with tactical discipline, emerging into the smoke-cleared haze of the grand hallway. The lingering haze stung their eyes, but the path to the north exit was clear of combatants.
Outside, the freezing night air hit them like a physical blow. Flashing red and blue lights could be seen flashing in the distance—local police and emergency responders finally answering the automated distress silent alarms, though they were still bottlenecked at the outer security gates by remote-locked barriers.
Dominic led Hannah down the ramp into the subterranean motor pool, where a sleek, matte-black armored SUV idled quietly. He unlocked the doors, tossed her a ballistic vest from the back seat, and climbed behind the wheel.
“Buckle up,” Dominic warned, revving the twin-turbo engine. “Vance is heading for the private airfield twenty miles north. If he boards that private jet with the ledger, we’ll never catch him.”
The heavy reinforced garage doors rolled upward, and the SUV surged out into the night, kicking up gravel and snow as it tore down the winding estate driveway.
As they rocketed onto the highway, cutting effortlessly through traffic with emergency high-beams flashing, Hannah pulled out her phone. Her fingers flew across the glass screen with astonishing speed.
“What are you doing?” Dominic asked, keeping his eyes glued to the slick asphalt ahead.
“Victor Vance thinks he won because he has the physical ledger,” Hannah said without looking up, her voice focused and sharp. “He thinks the gold-leaf journal contains the actual cryptographic keys. But your father was smarter than that.”
Dominic gripped the steering wheel tighter. “What do you mean?”
“Your father knew the archives were vulnerable to physical theft,” Hannah explained, typing furiously. “When I was auditing the Providence records five years ago, I discovered that the physical ledgers were only decoys. The real asset distribution algorithms were split into three separate digital fragments stored on encrypted cloud nodes across the Great Lakes server network.”
Dominic glanced at her in disbelief. “You know where the nodes are?”
“I wrote the encryption protocol for them,” Hannah said calmly, hitting enter on her screen. “Vance just stole a paperweight. And the moment he tries to open the physical book without the digital master key I just wiped from his access portal... the entire archive self-destructs into garbage data.”
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A grim, appreciative smile finally broke across Dominic’s face. “Remind me never to play poker with you, Hannah Miller.”
“Save the compliments for after we survive the airfield,” she retorted, clicking her seatbelt tighter as the silhouette of the private airstrip loomed ahead through the blinding snow.
