Chapter 3 - The LockdownBefore Ethan could react, the laboratory's overhead lights violently flickered, shifting from a bright clinical white to a pulsing, emergency crimson. The automated blast doors around the perimeter began to slide downward with a deafening hydraulic hiss, cutting off the facility from the rest of the CrossTech tower.
Warning: Facility lockdown initiated by external protocol.
"What is happening?" Maria cried out, grabbing Lily and pulling her off the chair, shielding her body with her own.
"It's a systemic lock," Ethan muttered, pulling a heavy-duty encrypted satellite phone from his suit jacket. The screen was completely dead. "They've jammed all local cellular and satellite signals. No one is getting in or out of this wing."
Dr. Vale let out a triumphant laugh, even as the security guards pressed him harder against the wall. "You're too late, Cross! Apex Aerospace already has the core algorithms. By morning, your multi-billion-dollar monopoly will be worthless, and I'll be sitting on a private island in the Caribbean."
Lily slipped out from her mother’s protective embrace, her eyes fixed on the main terminal screen where lines of data were scrolling at an impossible speed—not downloading, but uploading to an off-site server located deep within the financial district.
"He's lying," Lily said quietly.
Vale’s laughter stopped abruptly. He glared at the ten-year-old girl. "Shut up, you annoying little brat. What do you know about industrial espionage?"
"I know that the data transfer isn't going to Apex Aerospace," Lily said, pointing a small finger at the network routing map on the screen. "Look at the packet headers. The encryption key isn't corporate. It's a personal escrow wallet. He’s not selling it to a rival company... he’s selling it to a foreign intelligence black-market broker who's planning to ransom the entire grid back to you."
Ethan’s head whipped around to look at the screen, his expression turning icy. He grabbed Vale by the front of his shirt once more, lifting him entirely off the floor. "Is that true?"
Vale’s bravado finally shattered, his eyes darting wildly around the room as he realized he had been completely exposed by a child. "Cross, wait—we can cut a deal! You don't understand how dangerous these people are—"
"Shut him up," Ethan snapped, tossing Vale back down onto the floor like a sack of garbage. He turned his intense gaze toward Lily, the billionaire's demeanor shifting from corporate titan to desperate strategist. "Can you stop the transfer?"
Lily looked at the screen, biting her lower lip. "The transfer protocol is encrypted with a rolling twenty-four-digit hash. If I try to force-quit it without the master key, it will trigger an auto-destruct sequence that will wipe the engine's core processors clean. We'll lose the Prometheus Engine forever."
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"Then we need the master key," Ethan said grimly. "Where is it?"
Vale chuckled weakly from the floor, wiping blood from his chin. "You'll never find it. It's stored on a physical hardware token that I swallowed ten minutes ago."
