Chapter 7
The red emergency lights painted the office in a sinister,
bloody hue.
The silence of the power outage was deafening,
broken only by the distant wailing of police sirens in the streets below.
"The elevators are dead,"
Harper confirmed,
checking the emergency communication panel near the door.
"We are on the forty-fifth floor, Audrey,"
she stated,
the reality of our isolation settling heavily in the room.
"The backup generators only power the core servers and emergency lighting,"
I explained,
moving quickly to secure the physical locks on the server room doors.
"Our primary internet connection is severed,
but the internal intranet is still active."
I pulled out a heavy,
metal-cased laptop from a secure safe beneath my desk.
It was a completely offline terminal,
hardwired directly into the building's central nervous system.
"What are you doing,"
Harper asked,
watching me connect thick,
fiber-optic cables into the machine.
"If they knocked out the city grid,
they are planning a physical breach,"
I said,
booting up the building's automated security software.
"They want to physically destroy the Guardian protocol servers,
since they couldn't do it remotely."
I brought up the internal security cameras,
cycling through the feeds from the ground floor lobby.
The glass doors were shattered,
and three men dressed in tactical black gear were moving swiftly through the darkness.
They moved with military precision,
carrying heavy bags of equipment and suppressed automatic weapons.
"They are bypassing the stairwell alarms,"
Harper whispered,
watching the men cut through the security gates with thermal torches.
"They have the building's schematics,"
I noted,
my mind racing to calculate their ascent time.
"It will take them exactly fourteen minutes to reach this floor on foot,"
I predicted,
my voice unnervingly calm.
I had spent years preparing for digital threats,
but my father had also taught me the importance of physical security.
The Vanguard building wasn't just a corporate office,
it was a fortress disguised as a glass skyscraper.
"I am activating the labyrinth protocol,"
I announced,
typing a complex sequence of commands into the offline terminal.
Deep within the walls of the building,
heavy steel fire doors began to slide shut,
sealing off corridors and restructuring the internal layout of the floors below us.
"You're trapping them in the stairwells,"
Harper realized,
a fierce smile breaking through her fear.
"I'm slowing them down,"
I corrected her,
watching the mercenaries react to the changing environment on the cameras.
"But they have explosives,
and steel doors won't hold them forever."
We needed a way out,
and we needed to protect the core servers before the intruders breached the executive suite.
May you like
The ultimate test of the Vanguard Shield had begun,
and the stakes were nothing less than our lives.
