Chapter 38 - The Final Countdown
I burst through the emergency stairwell door and took the concrete steps three at a time, plunging down into the absolute darkness of the lower levels. The strobe lights from the lobby didn't reach down here; the only illumination came from the faint red glow of emergency exit signs.
By the time I reached sub-level four, my lungs were burning.
I approached the hidden vault door. It was wide open. Inside the archaic server room, the glow of the LCD terminal cast a sickly green light over the concrete walls.
Sterling was frantically typing at the terminal keyboard, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead, his immaculate suit ruined. The screen above him flashed a terrifying message: MEMORY WIPE AT 85%... MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED... LAZARUS EXECUTION IMMINENT.
He was trying to force the system to launch the financial attack before the servers completely died.
"Step away from the console, Sterling," I commanded, leveling the rifle at his back.
Sterling froze, his fingers hovering over the keys. He didn't turn around, but he let out a dry, rasping laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over stone.
"You can shoot me, Adrian," Sterling said softly. "But if I don't hit the enter key to stabilize the override, the system will default to execution in exactly thirty seconds. It’s a dead man's switch within a dead man's switch. Your grandfather was delightfully paranoid."
I kept the rifle steady. "You're lying. The hard crash is wiping the memory."
"It's wiping the local memory," Sterling corrected, slowly turning to face me, his eyes wide and manic in the green light. "But Lazarus is a cloud-based protocol, Adrian. The local server is just the trigger. The moment the wipe hits one hundred percent without a manual stabilization code, the cloud assumes the trigger has been destroyed and launches the attack automatically."
He held up his hands, completely unarmed. "You shoot me, the city burns. You let me finish typing the code, the city burns. Checkmate, Mr. Whitmore."
A cold spike of absolute dread pierced my chest. I looked at the terminal screen. MEMORY WIPE AT 92%.
I had twenty seconds before the financial bomb went off, destroying everything Marissa and I had built, wiping out the restitution funds, and plunging Boston into economic collapse.
"Adrian!" Marissa’s voice echoed from the vault entrance. She ran into the room, stopping short when she saw Sterling.
"Get back, Marissa!" I shouted, never taking my eyes off Sterling.
"The server," Marissa gasped, looking at the terminal. She saw the countdown and immediately understood what was happening. "He bypassed the local wipe."
"Ten seconds," Sterling whispered, smiling a ghastly, triumphant smile. "Welcome to the end of the line."
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Marissa didn't hesitate. She didn't look at Sterling, and she didn't look at the screen. She looked at the heavy, rusted fire axe mounted on the concrete wall beside the vault door—a relic from the 1950s that hadn't been touched in decades.
With a fierce, guttural cry, she grabbed the heavy wooden handle, hoisted the axe over her head, and swung it with every ounce of strength she possessed directly into the master power conduit running from the terminal into the concrete floor.
