Page 60 of Duty Compromised
“What happened in there?” I asked quietly.
“There was still someone inside. Professional, trained. Turns out he was not here about your car’s extended warranty. We fought, but I had to let him escape through the back rather than chase him and leave you unprotected.” His jaw tightened. “Could have been others waiting outside as backup. These people rarely work alone.”
“So they’re still out there.”
I took Ty’s silence as agreement.
“What’s the plan? When we get to the lab?”
“If we had more time, I’d run surveillance for a few days, identify patterns, set up a honeypot to draw out the mole.” He checked the mirror again, then suddenly accelerated through a yellow light. “But we’re down to five days until the auction. No time for subtlety. What do you need from the lab to finish the stabilizer?”
“Everything important is in my primary workspace,” I said, mentally cataloguing what I’d need. “The main tower with the custom GPU array, the quantum encryption drives with the stabilizer code, my modified oscilloscope for testing the frequency modulation?—”
“Can you work with less?”
I calculated quickly, running through the minimum viable configuration. “Unfortunately, no. I need everything to finish the code and make sure it works properly. And the testing equipment. Without that, I can’t verify the stabilizer will actually counter the Cascade Protocol. We’d be flying blind.”
“Fair enough. Let’s get in, grab all you need, and get out as quickly as we can. We want to avoid any surprises, if at all possible.”
“If we split up when we get inside, we should be able to get it all.”
“We’ll make it work. Whatever you need. We just need to pack it as small as possible, make it manageable if we need to run.”
I didn’t even want to ask why we would be running.
The Vertex building materialized out of the darkness ahead, its glass façade reflecting the streetlights in fractured patterns. The parking lot was nearly empty—just the two security vehicles that were always there and a maintenance van that I recognized from countless late nights. Ty pulled into a spot near the side entrance, backing in with skilled precision.
“Quick exit position,” he explained, though I’d already deduced that. Everything he did had purpose, intention, preparation for contingencies I couldn’t even imagine.
We walked toward the entrance, and my skin prickled with the sensation of being observed. Every window above us could conceal watching eyes. Every shadow between the landscaping lights could hide someone waiting. The intruder who’d escaped—was he here? Had he called for backup? My rational mind calculated probabilities, while my body prepared to run.
My keycard trembled as I held it to the reader. The light flashed green with a cheerful beep that seemed too loud in the quiet night.
The exterior door opened with its familiar mechanical click. We stepped into the dim hallway, emergency lighting painting everything in harsh contrasts. Our footsteps echoed despite my attempts to walk quietly—Ty moved silently beside me, though I could see him favoring his left side where the intruder had landed those brutal hits.
“You’re hurt worse than you’re letting on,” I whispered.
“I’m functional. That’s what matters.” But I caught the slight hitch in his breathing, the way he kept his left arm tucked protectively against his ribs.
I led him to the second checkpoint, already pulling out my card. I swiped. The reader beeped—sharp, negative, wrong.
“Try again,” Ty said, but his posture had already shifted, coiling like a spring under pressure despite his injuries.
I swiped the card a second time. The reader gave the same angry beep, and the little LCD screen displayed the same message: ACCESS RESTRICTED - AFTER HOURS ENTRY DENIED.
“They’ve locked me out.” The betrayal stung more than it should have. After everything I’d sacrificed for Vertex, after years of eighteen-hour days and breakthrough innovations, they’d revoked my access like I was some kind of security risk. “How could they?—”
Ty tried his card with the same result. “Wilmington.” The name came out like profanity. “That paranoid bastard probably did this the moment you took the drive home last time. Covering his ass, making sure any breach couldn’t be traced back to his security protocols.”
My mind was already racing ahead, finding solutions. “There’s a way around this.” I pulled out my phone, fingers already flying across the screen. “I helped design this security system. Built it from scratch, actually, when Vertex was still using magnetic strips and PIN codes like it was 1995.”
“You can hack your own building?”
“It’s not hacking when you wrote the code.” I was already deep in the system architecture, navigating layers of security I’d implemented over the years. “It’s more like…using the service entrance instead of the front door.”
The interface bloomed across my phone screen—beautiful in its complexity. Each security layer was like a puzzle I’d designed and therefore already knew how to solve. Firewall protocols I’d written during late nights when insomnia and inspiration collided. Encryption algorithms I’d refined through dozens of iterations, each one more elegant than the last.
“Here,” I murmured, finding what I needed. “Maintenance override protocols. They’re supposed to be for system updates and emergency access during power failures. The beautiful thing is they run on a completely separate authentication system—one that Wilmington doesn’t even know exists.”
