Chapter 10: The Vault Interface
Maya didn't wait for the guards to calculate their next move. She turned on her heel, sprinting across the terrace and slipping back through the crowded ballroom before anyone inside realized what had happened in the garden courtyard. Vance was waiting near the side exit by the catering kitchens, holding the backdoor open with a quiet urgency in his eyes.
“Did you get it?” Vance asked as Maya slid past him into the cool night air.
Maya held up the heavy gold signet ring, letting it dangle from her finger. “Director Vance sends his warmest regards. And his apologies for the mess in the fountain.”
Vance let out a sharp breath of relief, closing the door behind them as they hurried back toward the parked sedan. They climbed inside, and Vance slammed the car into gear, peeling away from the estate before the alarms inside the mansion could even begin to wail.
Within twenty minutes, they were back down in the sterile underground bunker. Maya tossed the signet ring onto the metal workbench next to the flash drive. Vance immediately sat down at the terminal, plugging the flash drive into a specialized reader while inserting the signet ring into an optical biometric scanner integrated into the console.
The main monitor flickered, a blood-red security warning flashing across the screen: “BIOMETRIC OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. WELCOME, DIRECTOR J. VANCE.”
“We’re in,” Vance whispered, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard with frantic precision. “Downloading the decryption keys and routing the master ledger to the decentralized dark-net nodes.”
A progress bar appeared on the screen, slowly ticking upward from zero percent. 5%... 12%... 25%...
“How long?” Maya asked, standing behind his chair and scanning the security feeds of the bunker’s perimeter cameras.
“Three minutes,” Vance replied. “The encryption is layered five deep. Once it hits one hundred percent, the files are permanently replicated across ten thousand independent servers globally. Vanguard won't be able to scrub it even if they detonate every data center they own.”
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Suddenly, the perimeter feed on the left monitor flickered. A convoy of three matte-black SUVs pulled up directly outside the heavy steel security gate of the bunker, their high-beam headlights washing out the camera lenses in a blinding white glare.
“They tracked the signet ring’s internal RFID tag,” Vance cursed under his breath, his fingers speeding up even further. “They’re at the gate.”
