Chapter 3
The administrative wing of the facility stretched out in an endless perspective of muted gray carpet and identical office doors. Overhead, emergency fluorescent strips flickered with an irritating buzz, casting long, jittery shadows against the walls. Rachel checked her watch; it was barely past midnight, yet the hours since the initial raid felt like an eternity.
Daniel led the way with cautious strides, the leather suitcase making a muffled thud against his thigh. They stopped in front of a heavy oak door bearing a brass plaque labeled Records and Compliance. Daniel pulled a keycard from his pocket—the one he had smuggled out of his supervisor’s desk three days ago—and pressed it against the digital scanner. The unit flashed red twice before turning a solid, welcoming green with a soft chime.
“In. Quickly,” Daniel muttered, pushing the door wide and ushering Rachel and Toby inside before slipping in behind them and locking it from the inside.
The room smelled of old paper, toner, and floor wax. Floor-to-ceiling metal shelving units dominated the space, packed with color-coded binders and digital backup drives. Rachel immediately sat Toby down at a central oak consultation table, kneeling in front of him to check his jacket for any tears or injuries.
“Are you hurt anywhere, Toby?” she asked softly, smoothing down his short brown hair.
“No, Aunt Rachel,” the boy whispered, hugging his knees to his chest. “When are we going home?”
Rachel swallowed hard, a lump forming in her throat that she couldn’t swallow down. Home was a smoking ruin of broken wood and shattered trust. She looked across the room at Daniel, who was already leaning over a computer terminal on the far desk, frantically typing commands with one hand while holding the dead smartphone to his ear with the other.
“The network is completely dark,” Daniel said, his voice taut with frustration as the monitor remained stubbornly black. “They didn’t just cut our lines; they wiped the local server cluster.”
“Then why are we here?” Rachel asked, standing up and walking over to him, keeping her voice low. “You said there was a physical hardcopy backup. You said the compliance logs would prove what the board authorized.”
“They are here,” Daniel replied, tapping the side of the heavy suitcase. “Or at least, the first three quarters of them are. But I need the master encryption key to decrypt the physical drives, and that key is housed in the senior partner’s vault two floors up.”
Rachel stared at him in disbelief. “Two floors up? Daniel, they are sweeping the building from the bottom and working their way up. If we go back out into that stairwell, we’re walking right into their net.”
“We aren’t going back out into the stairwell,” Daniel said, pointing a finger toward the far corner of the archive room. “There’s an old maintenance lift used for document transport. It connects directly to the executive suite. It bypasses the security grid entirely.”
Rachel crossed her arms, her pale skin contrasting sharply with her dark sweater. “And you know this because...?”
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“Because I installed the damn thing three years ago before they classified the department,” Daniel snapped in a harsh whisper, his eyes flashing with desperate urgency. “Trust me, Rachel. Please. We are the only ones left who know what those files contain. If we don’t upload this data before dawn, the cover-up becomes permanent.”
***
