Chapter 5 - THE INFILTRATIONBy 7:30 AM, the rain had settled into a thick, gray fog hanging over the glass towers of the financial district.
Vance-Cybertech’s headquarters rose fifty stories into the sky—a fortress of blue glass and reinforced steel.
Dressed in oversized medical scrubs covered by a long raincoat and wearing a surgical mask to hide the horrific bruises on my neck, I walked alongside Hannah through the underground delivery tunnel. Hannah’s hospital badge gave us access to the shared utility corridors connecting the medical center’s power substation directly to the skyscraper’s basement.
We made it into the server sub-level unnoticed.
The air was freezing, humming with the high-pitched drone of thousands of processors.
I approached the primary terminal, slotted the steel flash drive into the physical slot, and began typing furiously. My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, bypassing firewalls I had personally designed years ago.
Suddenly, a red warning box flared across the screen:
ACCESS DENIED: ACCOUNT SUSPENDED BY TEMPORARY CEO. REASON: LEGAL INCAPACITY / POWER OF ATTORNEY INITIATED.
I stared at the timestamp on the screen. The power of attorney document had been digitally signed thirty minutes ago.
By my father’s former personal attorney, Richard Sterling.
My chest tightened. Sterling was my father’s most trusted advisor. He was the one who helped me draft my original will.
He was the inside man.
He hadn't just helped Beckett and Mary—he was the architect of the entire takeover.
Above us, on the 45th floor, the board of directors was already gathering. I looked at the system clock: 8:45 AM.
I didn't just need to stop the vote. I needed to expose all of them in front of the global investors who were tuning in via live feed.
“Hannah,” I said, turning to her with a cold, calm determination. “I’m going to hijack the building’s presentation system. But I need you to go to the lobby and hand a specific envelope to the federal marshals when they arrive.”
May you like
“Federal marshals?” Hannah blinked. “You called them?”
“I didn't just record Beckett strangling me,” I said, pulling up a secondary code repository on the terminal. “I planted a tracker on his offshore account three weeks ago. Every dollar Mary paid to corrupt those police officers came directly from a shell company linked to illegal international weapons trades.”
