Chapter 9
In the dim red glow of the emergency floor strips, the server room looked like a futuristic tomb. Walter kept his grip on Marcus’s arms, pinning him securely against the darkened cooling units while Julian pushed himself up from the floor, wiping a small smear of dust from the shoulder of his black suit jacket.
"The transfer was interrupted," Julian said, checking the frozen display on the primary terminal. "The final security encryption keys remain trapped in local cache memory. Without the master decryption algorithm, Meridian Trust cannot access the core formula."
Marcus strained against Walter’s hold, his composure finally cracking under the weight of failure. "You think destroying the local link changes anything? The syndicate already has the baseline data from the primary trials in Geneva. By sunrise, every major board member will have signed off on the restructuring."
"Geneva is irrelevant if the domestic trials are audited by federal regulators," Clara said, walking over to the fallen satellite terminal and picking it up by its insulated casing. She slipped the hardware device securely into the pocket of her blue scrubs. "The vials I brought from the supply closet contain unadulterated baseline samples. Once the FDA lab runs a chemical chromatograph on that compound, your entire distribution network will be impounded."
Julian stepped closer to his cousin, his expression cold and devoid of familial warmth. "You used our family’s legacy, our mother’s memory, to build a compliance machine for a shadow syndicate. It ends tonight, Marcus."
Walter nodded, tightening his grip as he heard the distant sound of heavy pounding echoing down from the utility stairs above. Someone was attempting to force the upper security door from the library side.
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"We have company," Walter warned, his eyes fixed on the dark stairwell entrance. "The perimeter backup units must have bypassed the transformer blackout."
Julian grabbed a heavy wrench from the maintenance kit on the workbench, handing it to Walter while keeping his own eyes on the stairwell. "We can't go back up through the library. If the security team has breached the ground floor, we need to take the secondary drainage shaft toward the carriage house."
