Chapter 12 - The Roof Access
The heavy steel door of the server room groaned as the automated environmental scrubbing system began pumping pressurized nitrogen into the lower levels, dropping the oxygen concentration by the second. Maya didn't hesitate. She released Arthur, letting him slump to the floor, and grabbed the heavy iron wrench from the emergency maintenance kit near the door.
“Get up, Elena,” Maya commanded, her voice cutting through the rising hiss of escaping gas.
“There’s no way out!” Elena cried, covering her mouth with the sleeve of her beige pantsuit as the air grew thin and biting. “The rooftop exits are sealed by the Department of Homeland Security protocols the second a biohazard alarm trips!”
“Not all of them,” a weak voice rasped from the floor. Arthur Sterling looked up, bloodshot eyes blinking behind his uncorrected vision, clutching a small, encrypted override fob in his trembling palm. “The private elevator shaft… the one your father built for his personal emergency extraction… it bypasses the DHS firewall entirely.”
Maya looked down at him, her expression a mask of restraint and fury. “Why should we trust you now, Sterling?”
“Because I want to survive this just as much as you do,” Arthur coughed, tossing the small metal fob across the floor toward Maya’s feet. “The fob opens the old service hatch on the forty-second floor. But you’ll have to climb the manual ladder. The cables are fried.”
Maya snatched the fob off the floor, slipping it securely into the pocket of her torn red dress. She grabbed Elena by the arm, hauling her to her feet with fierce determination. “Move. Now.”
They scrambled out of the server room and into the vertical utility shaft, leaving Arthur behind in the clearing nitrogen fog. The climb up the rusted iron ladder was grueling. Every rung felt like dead weight against Maya’s sore muscles, and the high heels of her shoes clicked rhythmically against the metal rungs as she hauled herself upward, dragging Elena behind her step by step.
The air grew colder and thinner the higher they climbed. The sound of the city outside—muffled and distant—seemed like a memory from another lifetime. After what felt like hours of agonizing vertical effort, Maya reached the heavy steel hatch at the top of the shaft.
May you like
She pulled the encrypted fob from her pocket and pressed it firmly against the manual magnetic lock. The light flashed green. With a mighty heave, Maya threw her shoulder against the hatch, and it burst open, flooding the dark shaft with blinding, natural sunlight and a rush of fresh, crisp air.
---
