Chapter 5 - ESCAPE INTO THE SHADOWS"Ryker! The panic room emergency tunnel!"
Marco’s voice blasted through my earpiece just as a barrage of heavy-caliber bullets from the helicopter's machine gun shattered the remaining glass of the penthouse windows, turning the entire room into a hurricane of flying shards and pulverized concrete.
I sprinted down the corridor, diving through the heavy steel door of the panic room just as the hydraulic locks hissed shut behind me.
Inside, the room was bathed in soft blue emergency light. Lily and Owen sat huddled together in the corner on a plush leather sofa. Little Owen wasn't crying; he was staring at me with an eerie, protective grip on his teddy bear, while Lily looked up with absolute trust in her big blue eyes.
"Are we safe here, Mr. Ryker?" Lily whispered, her voice barely audible over the deep bass thumping of the helicopter blades shaking the building above us.
"We are safe, Lily," I said, kneeling down and resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. My heart was pounding, but my mind was ice-cold. "No one is going to touch you. I promise."
I turned to Marco, who was furiously typing on the panic room’s master control terminal. "Status?"
"The local police are still five minutes out, blocked by a coordinated traffic gridlock down on Michigan Avenue," Marco reported, sweat beading on his forehead. "Vanguard's corporate influence runs deeper than we thought. They've effectively locked down our entire district."
"Then we aren't waiting for the police," I said, standing up and pulling open a hidden wall panel in the back of the panic room.
Inside the panel revealed a private, high-speed cargo elevator—an emergency escape route designed exclusively for escaping structural collapses or hostile takeovers. It dropped straight down three hundred floors into the underground subterranean railway system beneath Chicago.
"Get them in the elevator," I ordered.
We piled into the small, reinforced steel car. I slammed the descending switch, and with a sickening lurch, we plunged downward into absolute darkness, leaving the burning wreckage of the penthouse far above us.
Within ninety seconds, the elevator hissed to a stop. The doors slid open to reveal a damp, concrete subterranean transit tunnel, unused for decades, connecting our basement to an abandoned freight line leading directly out of the city limits.
"Where are we going, boss?" Marco asked, checking his sidearm magazine as we stepped out onto the tracks.
"We're going to ghost country," I replied, pulling out a burner phone and dialing a scrambled number. "If Vanguard wants a war, we'll give them one—on our terms. But first, we need to find out what's inside that Swiss bank vault."
At the other end of the line, a raspy, trusted voice answered.
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"Steel? I thought you were dead after that stunt at O'Hare."
"Not yet, Nikolai," I said, looking down at the two exhausted children holding hands beside me. "I need a private jet out of the country in the next hour. Destination: Zurich."
