Chapter 26 - The Monster in the Machine
In the dark, the only sound was Mia’s breathing—fast, shallow, and terrifyingly close to my ear.
"Sarah," she whispered, her fingers knotting into the fabric of my jacket. "He didn't leave."
I didn't answer. I reached down, thumbing the safety off my sidearm, and slowly dropped to one knee, putting my back against the cold steel of the primary server rack.
Outside the heavy blast door, the gunshots had stopped. There was only the muffled sound of heavy, dragging footsteps on the catwalk, followed by the wet, rhythmic metallic thud of someone hitting the heavy steel hinges with an iron tool.
Then a green terminal screen flickered to life across the room.
The amber luminescence illuminated the desk, the dead body of Marcus Vance, and the figure standing directly behind the high-voltage switchboard in the corner of the room.
It wasn't Julian Croft.
It was Viktor—Dante’s pilot, his chief tactical officer, the man who had flown us through the storm from the safe house.
He was standing there calmly, an emergency battery pack slung across his chest, his service pistol resting in a low-ready position. His flight suit was unzipped at the neck, showing the silver medallion of Croft’s private security detail resting against his throat.
"You should have stayed in the kitchen, Sarah," Viktor said. His voice was steady, conversational, like a mechanic explaining a worn brake pad. "Dante is a dinosaur. He thinks loyalty is bought with honor and old blood. Croft knows loyalty is just a line item on an offshore ledger."
"You killed Marcus," I said, keeping Mia tucked behind my ribs, shielding her with my torso.
"Marcus killed himself when he refused to enter the terminal command," Viktor replied, taking a step toward the center console. "He held out for three days. Said his daughter was coming. I thought he was hallucinating from the blood loss. Turns out, the old bastard was right."
"The door is locked from the inside," I said, stalling, my eyes searching the darkness for the manual release handle on the wall. "Dante is outside. You can't get out of this shaft."
"I don't need to get out of the shaft," Viktor said. He tapped the glowing green monitor. "The override key isn't for an offshore account, Sarah. You were right about that. It’s the command to vent the high-pressure steam from the Amtrak tunnels directly into this lower deck. In three minutes, this entire sub-station will be flooded with three-hundred-degree vapor. Dante, Clara, Croft, and all of his men will be cooked alive on that catwalk."
"And you?"
Viktor smiled thinly, tapping the emergency rebreather mask hung over his shoulder. "I have five minutes of compressed air and a service hatch that leads directly to the subway platform at Lexington Avenue. Hand over the silver key, Sarah. Let me slot it into the auxiliary drive, and I’ll let you take the kid out through the hatch with me."
"You're lying," Mia’s small voice piped up from behind my hip. "He told the other man on the radio... no witnesses. He said Sarah has to stay with the fire."
Viktor’s smile vanished. "Smart kid. A shame."
He raised his weapon.
I didn't hesitate. I didn't try to outshoot him—he had military reflexes and the high ground behind the console. Instead, I grabbed the heavy cast-iron fire extinguisher mounted on the side of the server rack, swung it with every ounce of strength I had developed over ten years of lifting hundred-pound crates of potatoes and flour, and hurled it directly into the open high-voltage switchboard beside his head.
The explosion of sparks was blinding.
A deafening *crack* of blue electricity tore through the gloom, accompanied by the smell of ozone and burning copper. Viktor screamed as four hundred and eighty volts surged through the metal frame of the switchboard, kicking his body backward across the linoleum.
His pistol discharged twice into the ceiling, concrete chips raining down like hail.
I lunged forward through the smoke, grabbed his service pistol from the floor, and kicked his twitching body away from the console.
Behind me, the heavy blast door gave a sickening groan.
The hydraulic seals hissed, and the massive steel slab swung open.
Dante stepped through the threshold.
His coat was shredded, his face covered in soot and blood, his bare hands dripping crimson. Behind him, lying motionless on the metal grating of the catwalk, lay Julian Croft, unmoving in the flickering amber light of the emergency flares.
Dante looked at Viktor on the floor, then at the dead body of Marcus Vance in the chair, and finally at me, holding the smoking gun with Mia clutched against my side.
"It’s over," I said, my voice breaking.
Dante walked slowly across the room, stopped two feet from me, and looked down at his daughter.
Mia reached out a trembling hand, her soot-stained fingers touching the bloody cut along his cheekbone.
"Papa," she said.
May you like
Dante fell to his knees on the cold linoleum, buried his face in her small shoulder, and for the first time in his life, the most feared man in Manhattan wept.
***
