Chapter 4 - The Internal Affairs Raid
The sudden pitch-blackness swallowed the amber glow of the terminal, leaving only the faint, rhythmic pulsing of the red tracking cameras high above us. In the dense silence that followed the electrical explosion, the sound of my own breathing felt deafening.
"Stay down, Lily," I whispered, dropping to one knee and extending my arms to feel for her small woolen coat. My fingers brushed her shoulder, and I pulled her tightly against my side, pressing her head down against my chest.
Across the cavernous warehouse floor, Marcus’s voice cut through the dark, sharp and unmoored.
"Smart trick, Nathan. But cutting the mains doesn't change the architecture of this room. The biometric scanner has an internal battery backup. And I have the override key."
A mechanical whine hummed to life across the room, followed by the blinding glare of a high-intensity tactical flashlight snapping on. The beam swept wildly across rows of dusty wooden pallets, finally cutting a white swath through the floating dust motes and locking directly onto my position.
"Come out from behind the crates, Nathan," Marcus called out, his footsteps echoing as he began to close the distance. "We can settle this like executives. You sign the final transfer authorization, and I let the girl walk. You keep your freedom, and I walk away with the assets. Refuse, and security will find your bodies frozen in the loading dock by morning."
My mind raced. The emergency generator backup meant the security doors were sealed tight from the outside, but the ventilation shaft behind the old maintenance desk—though narrow—was designed to vent diesel exhaust and hadn't been welded shut yet.
"Lily," I whispered directly into her ear, my lips brushing her cold hair. "Can you crawl into that small space behind the metal desk? There's a tunnel that leads outside to the snowdrift. Do you remember when we used to play hide-and-seek?"
"I won't leave you," she whispered back fiercely, her small fingers digging into my sleeve. "Mom said you'd help us."
"I am helping you. When I count to three, run for the desk. Don't look back."
I grabbed a heavy steel wrench left behind on a workbench by the maintenance crew and hefted its weight in my palm. The tactical flashlight beam was only thirty feet away now, casting long, distorted shadows against the corrugated metal walls.
"One..." I muttered.
The sound of Marcus's boots grew closer, accompanied by the metallic scrape of his pistol sliding from its holster.
"Two..."
I prepped my muscles, ready to hurl the wrench into a stack of empty metal drums to create a deafening clang that would draw his fire away from the ventilation corridor.
Before I could reach three, a loud, metallic grinding sound erupted from the ceiling above the loading dock.
It wasn't the sound of an electrical short. It was the heavy, rhythmic thud of industrial boots hitting the corrugated steel roof—multiple pairs of them.
Marcus stopped dead in his tracks, swinging his flashlight upward. "Who's up there?" he shouted, the professional calm finally cracking in his voice.
From the shadows near the back vault, a voice rang out—cool, collected, and entirely unexpected.
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"Internal Affairs, Mr. Vale. Drop the weapon."
The beam of Marcus's flashlight flickered and died as a barrage of high-powered tactical strobes flooded the warehouse from every angle, blinding us all in a blinding wave of white light.
