CLATTER-SHOCK.
The floorboards beneath our feet seemed to drop two inches.
Inside the locked server vault at the rear of the production room, sixty feet down the hall, the automated high-voltage alarms began to chirp with rapid, rhythmic, synchronized warning codes:
BEEP… BEEP… BEEP.
ALERT: REMOTE SATELLITE BREACH DETECTED
ORIGIN: ZURICH // FINANCIAL CLEARING INTERFACE
TARGET: THE VANCE-STERLING COMMERCIAL REPOSITORY
MESSAGE: “THE FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLAR CHECK WAS AN ENCRYPTED BEACON.”
”THE EXTRACTION IS IN MOTION.”
”AND THE MAN WHO PLANTED THE SYNTHETIC GAS IN ELEANOR’S CAR…”
”IS CURRENTLY SITTING IN YOUR LIVING ROOM IN LAKEWOOD.”
The room seemed to lose its gravitational center in a fraction of a second.
The blood on my shirt cuff grew cold as mountain ice.
My phone in my coat pocket began to vibrate—a frantic, continuous, violent pulse that rattled against my ribs:
BZZZZT. BZZZZT. BZZZZT.
I pulled out the phone.
The caller identifier on the glowing screen was not a corporate extension.
