Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Then the facility’s security network does something I don’t expect.
It doesn't sound the alarm. It doesn't lock the system down. It simply asks an outside server one question: Is this supposed to be here? It wasn’t in any of the systems before.
The query goes out. A response comes back in a little over a second. That response carries an authorization code I’ve never seen before. And the code triggers a secondary security layer across the entire facility at the same time.
Oh shit.
Every lock in the building resets.
Doors that were open close. Doors that were closed lock. The readers on the lower corridors cycle from standby to active, and when they come back online the authorized fingerprints they’ve been programmed to accept have been completely replaced. Updated. Changed to a new set my system doesn’t recognize.
The key I made no longer fits the lock.
“Render,” I say into the radio. My voice stays steady because it has to. “The security network just cycled. All the fingerprint profiles have been refreshed. The system I built is no longer viable.”
Silence on his end for two seconds, and then he says. “I’m on the first underground level. The general holding area is right ahead. The door is locked. I think I can open it manually.”
“Do it. But the second-level corridor, Poe’s corridor—the fingerprint lock has been updated. I can’t open it remotely.”
“How long to rebuild with the new profiles?”
I look at the data on my screen. The new fingerprints are locked behind a type of encryption I’ve never seen before. It’s not standard. It’s not anything I encountered in Goldenbell’s network. It’s custom. Recent. Built specifically to stop the kind of approach I used.
Someone anticipated us. Someone knew what we were going to do and prepared a countermeasure.
The realization lands hard. I trace the verification request back through the network. The outside server it contacted is registered to Nightwood Capital—the same entity I accessed through Margaux Delacroix’s trust account. The same account I went through hours ago while Render was unconscious with a fever.
Serafina didn’t just notice my access to her financial network. She used the pattern of that access to predict how we would attack the facility. She saw the lock specifications in the data I pulled. She saw the timing of my work relative to the guard schedules. And she built a countermeasure that would activate the moment someone tried to use the information I’d gathered.
My choice. My access. My pattern. My fault.
“Enley.” Render’s voice is sharper now. “How long until you can rebuild it?”
“I... I don't know.” I swallow. “The new profiles are locked behind custom encryption. I have to crack that before I can rebuild the system. It could take ten minutes. It could take two hours. I won't know until I can see the whole structure.”
“We don't have two hours. Lockdown's already been triggered. Guards are mobilizing. Knight and BRAVO are engaging the perimeter. I need that door open in five minutes, or I'm going through it the hard way. And if I do that, everyone in this building is going to know exactly where I am.”
Panic surges through me.
I force myself to breathe. Shit. Fuck. I can do this. I have to do this.
Five minutes.
Five minutes to crack encryption I've never seen before, rebuild an access profile from scratch with new biometric data, and push it through a security network that's been reinforced to stop exactly this kind of attack.
“I'm working on it,” I say.
“Work faster.”
The edge in his voice slips past the operational calm and lands somewhere deeper. He's not angry with me. He's angry at the situation. But the situation exists because of me. Because of a decision I made alone in that storage unit while he was unconscious. That decision gave the enemy exactly what they needed to turn our entire plan inside out.
I should've seen it.
I should've realized using Margaux's account would leave a trail Serafina could follow. I was so focused on finishing the financial map, so convinced the evidence justified the risk, that I never stopped to consider the obvious. That gathering the evidence might destroy the operation it was supposed to protect.
The guilt hits like cold water—fast, sharp, and strong enough to pull me under if I let it.
I don’t let it. I can’t afford to. Render’s underground in a locked-down facility with guards converging on his position, and the only thing standing between him and Poe’s cell is an encrypted lock I have to open from two hundred yards away with a tablet, an antenna, and whatever I still have left in the part of my brain that solves impossible problems under impossible pressure.
I start breaking the encryption.
It’s layered. Three nested shells, each one protecting the next, each one requiring a different approach. The outer layer is a standard cipher that yields to brute force in about ninety seconds. The middle layer is more sophisticated. It’s a rotating key that changes every thirty seconds, forcing me to time my work exactly with the cycle.