Page 52 of Hooked On Victor
He pressed his palm to the crest.
Nothing.
Nikolai’s voice was low.
“Heat. The vault recognizes blood and body temperature.”
Victor hissed, breath fogging.
He yanked his coat off, baring his wrist, the pale skin marred by old scars and fresh bruises. He pressed it against the cold metal, letting his heat bleed into it.
For a moment, nothing.
Then a lowclickechoed in the silence.
The door shuddered once.
Then slid open.
Inside, the air was wrong.
Dry.
Old.
It had the stale, choking stillness of a tomb that hadn’t been opened in decades.
Their footsteps made no sound on the stone floor.
It wasn’t just a room.
It was a memory.
A place built not to hold treasure, but to hold secrets too dangerous to survive the light.
Shelves lined the walls, bowing under the weight of ancient ledgers, brittle papers bound in cracked leather. Rolled maps, their edges curling, traced borders that no longer existed. Velvet-lined boxes held jewels dulled with time, coins stamped with the faces of dead emperors.
Paintings leaned against one wall, faces turned inward as though hiding from the present.
Oilskin bundles were stacked in careful piles.
Letters sealed in wax no one had broken in a hundred years.
A reliquary of lost empire.
And in the center of the room, on a low stone altar, sat a single black case.
It was unadorned.
Sealed tight.
Victor moved toward it like a man in a dream.
Nikolai’s voice followed him, hushed but unyielding.
“That’s it. That’s the failsafe. The case holds a device designed by a chemist to incinerate the entire vault in minutes if opened improperly.”
Victor stopped.
