CHAPTER 5 — LEVEL B4

Evelyn, Daniel, Claire, and Luis raced down the emergency stairs.

B1.

B2.

B3.

The lights grew dimmer with each level.

When they reached B4, smoke drifted beneath the door.

Daniel touched the metal handle.

“Hot.”

“The servers,” Claire said. “They must be overheating them.”

Luis pulled the fire extinguisher from the wall.

He wrapped his jacket around his hand and forced the door open.

Smoke rolled into the stairwell.

They entered the underground archive.

Rows of metal storage cages stretched into darkness.

An alarm counted down from overhead speakers.

SERVER PURGE IN TWO MINUTES.

Evelyn raised the silver key.

“Locker number?”

Claire shook her head.

“Rachel never told me.”

They searched the nearest rows.

The key fit none of them.

Daniel shouted Rachel’s name.

A faint pounding answered from deeper in the archive.

They ran toward it.

Rachel was trapped behind a glass security door at the end of the corridor.

She was alive.

Barely.

Smoke filled the room around her.

Daniel searched for a control panel.

“There!”

Claire found a metal locker beside the door.

The silver key slid into its lock.

Inside was a flash drive, a paper ledger, and a small handheld remote.

Claire grabbed the remote and pressed its only button.

The glass door unlocked.

Daniel pulled Rachel out as she collapsed into his arms.

“Can you walk?”

Rachel coughed violently.

“The drive…”

Evelyn took it from the locker.

“Is this the evidence?”

“Everything,” Rachel gasped. “Transfers, forged signatures, security footage, offshore accounts.”

A heavy door slammed behind them.

Briggs stood at the end of the corridor with two guards.

One held a can of gasoline.

Daniel lowered Rachel gently to the floor.

“You’re going to burn us alive?”

Briggs’s face shone with sweat.

“I never wanted this.”

“You grabbed an elderly woman in front of fifty witnesses,” Luis said. “Stop pretending you have principles.”

Briggs pulled a pistol from beneath his jacket.

Everyone froze.

Evelyn stepped in front of Rachel.

“Charles will sacrifice you.”

“Shut up.”

“He already has.”

Briggs aimed the weapon at her.

“You don’t know anything.”

“I know he let us come down here.”

Briggs hesitated.

“He could have ordered the elevators locked,” Evelyn continued. “He could have taken the key. He wanted us to find Rachel.”

“Why?”

“So all the evidence, all the witnesses, and the man he used to enforce his crimes would die in one convenient fire.”

The guard holding the gasoline slowly looked at Briggs.

“Is that true?”

“No.”

A deep mechanical rumble shook the floor.

The archive doors began sealing automatically.

Overhead, the countdown continued.

SERVER PURGE IN SIXTY SECONDS.

Briggs touched his radio.

“Mr. Voss?”

Static.

“Mr. Voss, respond.”

Nothing.

Evelyn’s voice softened.

“He’s gone.”

Briggs’s gun lowered by an inch.

Then a recorded message played over the speakers.

Charles’s voice.

“Thank you for your service, Briggs.”

Briggs’s face collapsed.

The emergency lights turned red.

Charles continued.

“Your family will receive the compensation we discussed.”

Briggs stared at the closing steel doors.

“You son of a—”

The recording ended.

Flames erupted behind the server cages.

Daniel lifted Rachel.

Luis pointed toward a maintenance tunnel.

“That leads to the parking garage!”

They ran.

Briggs remained frozen.

Evelyn stopped beside him.

“Come with us.”

He looked at her in disbelief.

“After what I did?”

“You can answer for what you did alive.”

The flames spread closer.

Evelyn held out her hand.

Briggs stared at it.

Then he took it.

They entered the tunnel seconds before the archive exploded behind them.

But as the shockwave threw them to the ground, the flash drive slipped from Evelyn’s hand.

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