Page 107 of Rescuing Aria
I mutter under my breath, half memory, half prayer. “Red to black. Yellow bypass. Blue disconnect. Ground the circuit.”
My fingers twitch over each decision. Mistakes here mean alarms. Gas. Fail-safes.
I isolate the wires, using the tip of the pick to strip connections. One wire sparks. I flinch, heart leaping—but the circuit holds.
I ground it to a stripped anchor bolt embedded in the floor.
A soft trio of clicks. Quiet. Final. Like coffin lids, one by one.
The lock disengages.
I don’t savor the moment. No fist-pump. No breath of victory.
I’m moving.
The hallway beyond is near-dark. A sickly yellow light faintly fluoresces from the broken bulbs overhead. The air is heavy. Dust thick enough to taste. Mold creeps up corners. Every shadow could be a camera.
Could be a gun.
Far off, voices echo. Cuts of radio chatter. Words clipped and panicked: “Sector two breach… no visual confirmation… he’s gone dark.”
Damn right I have.
Noise swells ahead—boots. Close. Fast.
I duck back and press into a crumbling alcove just before two guards barrel past. Tactical armor. High alert.
Their guns are hot. Their strides purposeful. They’re not performing a sweep. They’re hunting and carrying the scent of urgency. They know I’m out.
I wait. Five seconds. Ten. Until the hallway quiets and the sound of their boots fades into nothing.
Then I move.
I sink into every shadow. My pulse leads me now—thunderous, but focused. Each movement is practiced and deliberate. I scan corners, wait for the telltale rotations of camera eyes. Up ahead—a vent, bricked shut. New. Not in Wolfe’s blueprints.
He’s changed the maze. Tightened the net.
Cameras dot the main thoroughfares now. Laser tripwires glow when you catch them at the right angles. If I hadn’t trained for this, I’d already be dust and blood on the floor.
I slide into a maintenance corridor—too narrow to turn around in fully. Smells like burned dust and bleach. Pipes sweat condensation overhead. The air pressure shifts, like I’ve dipped below sea level. The architecture mutates.
This wasn’t planned by architects.
This was carved by Wolfe’s paranoia. Buried beneath everything official.
I hit a junction. Left is the luxury wing—wine cellars and imported Italian marble displays. Symbolic power. Public-facing.
Right angles downward. Archives. Old storage. Noise hums through the corridor—generators? Pumps? Something mechanical and private.
Something hidden.
I head left.
The walls shift to rough brick. Conduits hum to my left. Somewhere water trickles. The smell’s different here—wet insulation, mixed with ozone and faint masks of ammonia. Chemicals meant to sterilize, to hide rot. It makes my stomach curl.
I round a bend—and freeze.
Two guards. Talking in low voices. One nods toward the stairwell I just came from.
