Chapter 7 - The Sweet Almoned Air
The heavy smell of almonds clung to the damp air of the sub-basement corridor, instantly catching in Julian’s throat and making him cough violently. He dropped to one knee, pulling Lily down with him and pressing the hem of his white shirt against her nose and mouth to filter out the suffocating vapor. The halon gas was dense, rolling across the concrete floor like a low-lying fog, obscuring their boots and casting strange, distorted reflections from the glowing red emergency lights.
"Hold your breath!" Arthur choked out, slamming his hand onto the manual override panel a second time to reverse the gas flow before it rendered them unconscious.
With a grinding groan of heavy gears, the overhead vents clicked shut, and suction fans whirred to life, slowly pulling the sweet-smelling fog back into the ceiling ducts. Julian gasped for air, his chest burning as he pulled Lily up against his side. She was coughing weakly, her eyes watering from the fumes, her little yellow dress fluttering as she shivered in the freezing draft.
"Are you insane?" Arthur yelled, coughing into his tactical glove as he glared down at Julian. "That gas was designed to put down an entire sector in thirty seconds!"
"You were taking too long!" Julian shot back, his voice hoarse as he helped Lily to her feet. "Something is right above us on those stairs, and you’re standing there playing password games!"
Arthur didn't have time to answer. The heavy titanium door before them slowly hissed open, the pneumatic seals releasing with a loud pneumatic sigh. The interior of the archive was bathed in the cool, steady glow of dozens of computer monitors lining the walls. Rows of steel server racks hummed quietly in the center of the room, casting long shadows across the polished linoleum floor. It looked entirely undisturbed, a stark contrast to the chaos and destruction of the upper levels.
"Inside. Now," Arthur ordered, shoving past Julian and pulling Lily gently by the hand to get her away from the open doorway.
Julian swept his gaze across the archive as he stepped inside, his dark coat sweeping the floor. The room was immaculate—no torn acoustic foam, no blood on the walls, no signs of a struggle. At the far end of the room stood a massive mahogany desk covered in neatly stacked paper files, a single laptop sitting open in the center, its screen glowing with a complex graphical interface.
"This is Sarah’s private terminal," Arthur said, walking briskly toward the desk and pulling out the leather office chair. He sat down quickly, his fingers flying across the keyboard with practiced speed. "If her research notes are anywhere, they’re encrypted in this local drive."
Lily wandered a few steps away, her small hand trailing along the edge of a steel server rack. Her eyes wandered toward a dark, glass-walled office partitioned off in the corner of the archive.
"Daddy," Lily whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the servers. "There’s someone sitting at the other desk."
May you like
Julian froze, his hand instinctively dropping to his side where his coat hung heavy. He turned slowly toward the glass-walled office across the room.
---
