Chapter 7 - TWO MINUTES TO SAVE AN EMPIRE
The countdown continued.
01:47.
01:46.
01:45.
Emergency alarms echoed through Vale Dominion’s headquarters.
Employees poured into stairwells.
Security teams attempted to access the building’s internal network.
Every terminal displayed the same message.
NIGHTGLASS TERMINATION PROTOCOL.
Mara moved to the conference table and connected her isolated computer.
“What does the protocol destroy?”
“Everything,” Elias said.
“Client records?”
“Financial models.”
“Government contracts?”
“Source identities.”
Reyes stared at him.
“You keep source identities inside a corporate tower?”
“Not names.”
“Patterns.”
“Enough to identify them?”
“Yes.”
If the system erased itself, years of evidence against Meridian would disappear.
If it released the records publicly, innocent informants could die.
Julian had designed the attack so every choice caused damage.
Mara opened a command line.
“Who built the termination architecture?”
“Eleanor.”
“Then she included a manual break.”
“Where?”
“Three authorization points.”
Elias pointed toward the building map.
“Executive command center.”
“Lower archive.”
“Primary server vault.”
“We are in the command center,” Mara said.
“Who can access the other two?”
“Julian revoked central credentials.”
“Physical access?”
“Yes.”
Reyes used his radio.
“Federal teams to lower archive and server vault.”
Static answered.
The building’s communication system had been jammed.
01:19.
“I’ll take the archive,” Reyes said.
Elias nodded.
“The service stairs on the north side.”
“What about the server vault?”
My father looked at me.
“No.”
I understood before he spoke.
“The biometric access is family-locked.”
“Elias,” Mara warned.
“Victoria is injured.”
“I can do it.”
My father shook his head.
“The vault is thirty-seven floors below us.”
“I survived Nathan.”
“That does not make you indestructible.”
“No.”
I stepped toward the door.
“It makes me finished with being protected through lies.”
We separated.
Reyes descended toward the lower archive.
My father and I entered a private service elevator that still responded to manual controls.
The car dropped rapidly.
00:58.
The screen above the door counted floors.
Thirty-two.
Twenty-nine.
Twenty-five.
My father stood beside me in silence.
“When this is over,” I said, “you will tell me everything.”
“Yes.”
“No classified excuses.”
“Yes.”
“No deciding what I can survive.”
He looked at me.
“I do not know how to be your father without trying to control the danger around you.”
“That is not fatherhood.”
“What is it?”
“Trusting me with the truth.”
The elevator reached the sublevel.
00:31.
The server vault stood behind three steel barriers.
Elias placed his palm against the first scanner.
ACCESS GRANTED.
I placed mine against the second.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The third required both simultaneously.
We pressed our hands to the glass.
The barrier opened.
Cold air rushed from the vault.
Thousands of servers blinked in long rows.
At the center stood a mechanical control column.
00:19.
Mara’s voice crackled through a short-range emergency receiver.
“I have command control.”
Reyes responded seconds later.
“Archive control secured.”
My father placed his hand inside the mechanical lock.
A needle pierced his thumb.
Blood authorization.
I did the same.
00:08.
The system requested a verbal phrase.
Elias spoke first.
“Information without conscience becomes tyranny.”
The system waited.
I did not know my phrase.
My mother had built it.
Then I remembered what she always told me.
“Fear is information.”
The countdown stopped at two seconds.
For one breathless moment, nothing happened.
Then the servers returned to normal.
Mara’s voice came through.
“Termination canceled.”
I leaned against the control column.
My body finally began to tremble.
My father reached toward me.
I stepped away.
The movement hurt him.
I saw it.
I could not yet care.
When we returned to the upper floors, federal tactical teams had secured the building.
The original Nightglass files were gone.
The thieves had escaped through a maintenance tunnel beneath the river.
But Mara had recovered one fragment from the breach.
A flight plan.
Julian’s aircraft had landed in northern Wisconsin.
The observatory was less than twenty miles from the private airstrip.
“We leave now,” I said.
Reyes shook his head.
“You need treatment.”
“My mother is there.”
“Julian wants you to follow.”
“I know.”
“That means he has prepared for you.”
“He prepared for the frightened woman Nathan kept inside Blackthorn Manor.”
I looked at the Nightglass files.
“He has never met the woman who walked out.”
Elias ordered a secure aircraft.
Mara assembled a portable decryption system.
Reyes contacted a federal tactical unit in Wisconsin.
Before we left the conference room, a secure message appeared on my phone.
This one came from Nathan’s detention terminal.
Celeste knows a second entrance to the observatory.
Beneath it was another sentence.
She will only give it to you in person.
Celeste was being held at a federal facility across the city.
We had no time to visit her and reach Wisconsin before midnight.
Then Mara checked Celeste’s custody status.
Her face changed.
“What?”
“Celeste is no longer in custody.”
Reyes grabbed the tablet.
“Who authorized her release?”
“No one.”
The system showed that Celeste had been transported for medical evaluation fourteen minutes earlier.
The ambulance never reached the hospital.
A traffic camera captured it turning onto a private road.
The same road leading to the airport where Julian’s second aircraft was waiting.
Celeste had either been rescued.
Or taken.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
For several seconds, all I heard was breathing.
Then Celeste whispered.
“Victoria, Julian knows your mother is not going to the observatory to retrieve the ledger.”
“What is she going there to do?”
“To destroy it.”
A man’s voice spoke in the background.
Celeste gasped.
The line filled with static.
Before it disconnected, she forced out one final warning.
“Do not let Elias open the lower archive.”
I looked at my father.
He had heard every word.
For the first time, fear appeared openly on his face.
“What is inside the lower archive?” I asked.
May you like
He answered without hesitation.
“The proof that your mother founded Meridian.”
