Chapter 9: A Bullet in the Server Rack
A sharp pfft echoed through the corridor as a silenced round splintered the doorframe just inches from Arthur’s shoulder, showering wood fragments across the concrete floor.
"Get inside!" Dr. Vance yelled, shoving Arthur fully into the freezing server room before diving across the threshold himself.
Arthur swung his arm around the doorframe, bringing the heavy steel wrench down hard against the electronic keypad on the exterior wall. Sparks flew in a brilliant shower of orange and white as the internal circuits shattered beneath the blow, locking the heavy steel door from the outside and disabling the locking mechanism permanently.
From the other side of the door, a muffled curse echoed down the hall, followed immediately by the dull, rhythmic thud of Evelyn’s shoulder slamming against the reinforced steel. The door held firm, the heavy bolts engaged deep into the concrete frame.
Arthur turned around, breathing heavily in the freezing air of the server room. The hum of the server racks was deafening, filling the space with a sterile white noise. Rows of black cabinets stretched out into the gloom, their blue and green indicator lights blinking with indifferent regularity.
"Is she locked out?" Vance asked, scrambling to his feet and brushing dust off his trousers.
"She's locked out," Arthur confirmed, tossing the dented steel wrench onto a nearby metal table. He looked around the room, his eyes landing on a massive master terminal console situated in the center of the array. "Now, where are the files?"
Vance hurried over to the master console, dropping his diagnostic tablet onto the metal desk and tapping rapidly into the main interface. "She won't stay out long. There's a manual override bypass in the maintenance tunnels behind this building. We have about three minutes before she cycles back around through the lower catwalks."
"Find the medical override for Clara and Lily first," Arthur ordered, leaning over the console, his eyes scanning lines of rapidly scrolling hex code. "Then download the patent transfer logs. I want every name, every signature, and every shell company they used to set this up."
"Downloading now," Vance replied, his fingers a blur across the mechanical keyboard. A progress bar appeared on the large central monitor, moving steadily from left to right: 10%, 45%, 80%...
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Suddenly, the overhead lights in the server room flickered and died, plunging the space into near total darkness save for the eerie, shifting glow of the server rack indicator lights.
A sharp, metallic scraping sound echoed from the ceiling vents directly above them.
