Chapter 13 - The Glass Barrier
The red emergency strobe lights cut violent, rhythmic slices through the dim corridor of the subterranean cell block. Ava pressed her palm flat against the cold, reinforced glass barrier, her skin tingling from the sudden, jarring contact with the real, breathing flesh of the girl who was supposed to be a ghost.
"Nia, how do we open this door?" Ava shouted over the deafening shriek of the overhead security siren, her eyes darting frantically around the small, windowless cell for a manual release lever or a keypad.
Nia didn't look away from Ava's face. Her dark eyes, filled with a terrifying depth of suffering and suppressed knowledge, searched Ava’s features with clinical precision.
"There is no manual release on this side," Nia replied, her voice steady despite the chaos echoing around them. "The master override console is back in the main vault. Julian has the cryptographic key card in his breast pocket. Without it, this glass won't shatter for a tank shell."
Heavy footsteps pounded down the concrete corridor behind Ava. Marcus appeared around the corner, his face twisted in desperate fury, his chest heaving as he gripped the heavy brass fireplace poker like a weapon. Behind him strode Julian, entirely unbothered by Marcus’s threats, his charcoal suit still immaculate amidst the swirling dust and red strobe lights.
"Step away from the glass, Ava," Marcus snarled, pointing the heavy iron poker directly at her chest. "This has gone far enough. You're a failed experiment, an unauthorized glitch that needs to be erased before the authorities arrive."
Julian raised a single hand, stopping Marcus in his tracks with a sharp, imperious gesture. He stepped forward into the narrow cell block, stopping just inches away from Ava, his eyes locked on Nia through the glass partition.
"You always were the stubborn one, Nia," Julian said smoothly, addressing the girl inside the cell as if they were discussing business over afternoon tea. "Five years in a concrete box, and you still refuse to sign the asset transfer. But times have changed. The police are forty seconds away from breaching the ground-floor gates. If you don't sign right now, Marcus goes to prison for murder, I go into exile with the offshore accounts, and Ava gets left down here to take the fall as the mastermind."
Nia smiled—a cold, humorless expression that mirrored Elena’s terrifying composure upstairs. "Let them breach the gates, Julian. The moment the police step foot in this house, the automated hard drive in this cell transmits every financial ledger, medical log, and DNA sequencing report directly to the federal prosecutor's office."
Julian’s calm facade finally fractured. His eyes widened slightly in genuine shock as he realized he had been outmaneuured.
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Before anyone could move, the heavy iron security door at the end of the bunker echoed with the sound of a battering ram smashing against the frame.
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