Chapter 11: The Penthouse Brawl
The heavy glass coffee table shattered into a thousand glittering diamonds as the first guard crashed through it, the sharp edges biting into his tactical vest. The second operative cursed loudly, swinging his assault rifle barrel around to track Maya as she bounced back up to her feet with feline agility.
Maya didn't give him the chance to acquire his target. She lunged forward inside his tactical turning radius, slapping the barrel of his rifle upward just as he squeezed the trigger. A deafening roar echoed through the luxury penthouse study as a bullet punched a jagged hole through the ornate plaster ceiling, raining white dust down over the expensive bookshelves.
Before the guard could recover his balance, Maya drove her palm upward into the base of his nose, feeling the cartilage crunch beneath the impact. He stumbled backward, gasping for breath, and dropped the rifle.
From across the room, Harrison Vance scrambled toward the private panic room concealed behind a sliding wood-paneled wall, his expensive shoes clicking frantically against the hardwood floor.
“Stop him!” Maya muttered to herself, spinning around to deal with the first guard who was now clawing his way back to his feet, a furious snarl twisting his face.
The guard pulled a combat knife from his chest rig, lunging forward with a wild, overhead slash aimed straight at her throat. Maya stepped inside the arc of the blade, grabbing his wrist with her left hand and pivoting sharply on her heel. Using his own forward momentum and leverage, she executed a classic judo throw, slamming the massive man headfirst onto the thick rug with a breathless thud that knocked him out instantly.
She didn't waste a second celebrating. She sprinted across the study toward the sliding wood panel, but she was fractionally too late. The heavy steel-reinforced door of the panic room slammed shut with a hydraulic hiss, the digital keypad flashing a solid crimson light.
Harrison was sealed inside his vault, surrounded by backup communication arrays and personal weapons caches. But more importantly, through the glass observation slit beside the keypad, Maya saw what was mounted on the wall inside the vault: a heavy, black leather-bound ledger with gold embossed lettering—the original master maintenance log containing Harrison’s verified signature.
She gripped the keypad housing with both hands, shaking it in frustration, but the reinforced alloy casing was impenetrable to bare force. The security system in the hallway outside began to blare a deafening klaxon, strobe lights flashing red and white across the walls. The building’s central lockdown protocol had been triggered by the gunfire.
More guards were swarming the service stairwells right now, and they would reach the forty-second floor in less than two minutes. Maya reached into her dark backpack, pulling out the heavy tactical flashlight and her multi-tool set. If she couldn't break the door down with brute force, she would have to bypass the electronic relay box wired into the wall conduit beside the frame.
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She wrenched the metal cover plate off the conduit box with her multi-tool, exposing a nest of fiber-optic wires and electrical relays. Her fingers flew over the connections, her breathing slow and controlled despite the blaring alarms and the flashing strobe lights reflecting off her dark braids and wet grey sneakers. She had one shot to short-circuit the magnetic lock before the entire floor became a steel cage with no way out.
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