Episode 11
Julian stared at the forged passports, then down at Leo, whose skin felt like ice. The boy’s breathing was shallow, a faint wheeze escaping his lips. If Julian chose the city, Leo might die of hypothermia before they even reached Sarah’s office. If he chose the airstrip, Sarah—the only adult who had ever truly bled for them—would be executed, and their names would be erased from the world forever.
"He won't survive the drive into the city," Julian said, his voice raw, shaking with a mixture of rage and terror. He gripped the iron crowbar tighter. "Look at him. He’s freezing to death."
The woman in the jumpsuit stepped closer, kneeling beside them. She reached into her duffel bag and pulled out a thermal foil blanket and a small, pre-loaded auto-injector. "This is an epinephrine-based warmer. It’ll stabilize his core temperature and keep his heart pumping for the next two hours. But it's a temporary fix, Julian. After that, he needs a hospital."
She slammed the injector into Leo’s thigh. The boy gasped, his eyes flying open as a sudden surge of artificial adrenaline forced color back into his pale cheeks. He gripped Julian’s wet sleeve, his knuckles shaking.
"Juju..." Leo choked out, his voice sharp but alert. "Don't let them kill Sarah. She... she didn't leave us."
Julian looked at his little brother, seeing the raw, human desperation in his eyes. The terrifying, calculating prodigy from the cliff was gone; this was just a boy who wanted to protect the people who loved him. Julian nodded, a cold, unyielding resolve hardening inside his chest. He stripped off his soaking jacket and pulled the dry clothes from the duffel bag over Leo's frame, wrapping him in the crinkling foil blanket.
"What's your name?" Julian asked the woman, standing up and tucking the crowbar back into his belt.
"Call me Echo," she said, pulling a set of keys from her pocket. "My car is hidden in a ditch half a mile up the road. It’s an old police cruiser with a intercepted radio. We have nineteen minutes."
Minutes later, they were tearing down the abandoned highway, the old sedan's engine roaring as Echo pushed it past ninety miles per hour. In the back seat, Julian held Leo tight, listening to the tactical radio on the dashboard. The frequency was buzzing with frantic, coded chatter.
"Team Alpha is at the target location. Perimeter secured. Entering the Jenkins law office now."
Julian’s blood ran cold. "They're already there."
"We’re five minutes away," Echo said, her hands gripping the steering wheel as she drifted the car around a sharp turn, entering the dark, towering skyline of the city's financial district. "The office is on the fourth floor. The building's main power is routed through the basement. If I can cut the grid, their data-wiping equipment will freeze, but it’ll also trap Sarah in the dark with them."
"Do it," Julian said. "In the dark, they lose their numbers."
The car screeched to a halt in the alleyway behind Sarah’s office building. The night was dead silent, save for the distant hum of city traffic. Echo popped the trunk, handing Julian a tactical flashlight and a heavy, short-barreled wrench. "I’ll drop the power in exactly sixty seconds. Get the boy to the service elevator before the backup generators kick in. You’ll have a three-minute window of total blackout."
Julian didn't hesitate. Carrying Leo on his back, he bolted through the rear service door of the building. The stairwell was concrete and echoing. He took the steps two at a time, his lungs burning, his legs feeling like lead.
Fifty-eight... fifty-nine... sixty.
SNAP.
The overhead fluorescent lights died instantly, plunging the stairwell into a suffocating, velvety darkness. Julian didn't turn on his flashlight. He used his memory of the building from the trial prep, pushing through the heavy fire door onto the fourth floor.
The hallway was pitch black. Then, a muffled scream echoed from the end of the hall, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting a wall. It was Sarah.
"Where is the master encryption key, Jenkins?" a brutal, low voice hissed in the dark. "The live-stream was a localized feed. Where is the hard backup?"
"Go to hell," Sarah gasped, coughing blood.
Julian slid Leo into a recessed alcove behind a vending machine. "Stay here. Don't make a sound."
Julian crept down the carpeted hallway, the crowbar raised in his right hand. Through the frosted glass door of Sarah's office, he saw the faint, green glow of a portable battery-powered military server unit. Two large silhouettes were hovering over Sarah, who was tied to her desk chair, her face bruised and bleeding under the beam of a tactical tactical light. A third man was typing furiously into a ruggedized laptop, trying to bypass the security firewalls.
"The backup generator is engaging in sixty seconds," a voice crackled from the laptop man's earpiece.
Julian didn't wait for the lights. He shattered the glass door with his elbow and lunged into the room.
The sudden explosion of glass startled the mercenaries. Before the first man could pivot his weapon, Julian swung the iron crowbar with all his weight, catching the man squarely in the side of the knee. The bone cracked, and the guard collapsed with a choked scream.
The second man, the one interrogating Sarah, spun around, dropping his flashlight. The beam rolled across the floor, casting wildly spinning shadows across the walls. He lunged at Julian, his massive combat-trained frame slamming Julian into a heavy oak bookcase. Books rained down as Julian gasped for air, the man’s heavy hands locking around his throat, choking the life out of him.
"Julian! Run!" Sarah screamed, struggling against her ropes.
Julian’s vision began to blur. He clawed at the man’s face, but the mercenary’s grip was like iron. His oxygen was depleting fast. Through the haze of his fading consciousness, he saw the laptop screen flashing a progress bar: Wipe Sequence: 89%... 90%...
Suddenly, a small, dark shadow darted into the room.
It was Leo. The boy didn't attack the guard choking Julian. Instead, he grabbed the heavy, metal-bound battery pack powering the mercenaries' server unit and slammed it directly into the open, exposed wiring of the building’s emergency wall outlet, which had just begun to hum with electricity.
A massive, blinding arc of blue electrical sparks exploded through the room.
The sudden surge fried the laptop instantly, smoke pouring from the keyboard as the progress bar vanished into static. The mercenary holding Julian let go, startled by the explosion, backing away as the room filled with the smell of ozone and burning plastic.
At that exact microsecond, the backup generators kicked in. The overhead emergency lights flickered to life, bathing the room in a harsh, clinical red glow.
Julian collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, but his relief was cut short.
Standing in the doorway of the office, framed by the red light, was Katherine.
She wasn't wearing her pristine business suit anymore. She wore a dark, tactical coat, her face twisted into an expression of absolute, venomous hatred. In her hand, she held a compact, silenced submachine gun. Behind her stood three more heavily armed operatives, their weapons raised.
The mercenary Julian had hit was groaning on the floor. The other was recovering from the electrical blast. They had failed to wipe the server quietly, but now, they didn't care about being quiet.
"You ruined everything," Katherine whispered, her voice trembling with a terrifying, psychopathic rage. She pointed the barrel directly at Julian’s head. "The Syndicate is dismantled. The accounts are frozen because of the blast. I have nothing left to sell. My life is over because of you two."
Leo stepped in front of Julian, his tiny body shaking from the adrenaline crash, the foil blanket falling from his shoulders. "Kill us then. But everyone knows what you did."
Katherine raised the weapon, her finger tightening on the trigger. "Goodbye, my sweet boys."
CLICK.
The sound didn't come from Katherine’s gun. It came from behind her.
Echo was standing at the end of the hallway, holding a remote detonator. But she wasn't looking at Katherine. She was looking at the elevator shaft next to them.
"The building's main gas line runs right behind this wall, Katherine," Echo said, her voice deadly calm over the radio headset she wore. "I didn't just cut the power. I rigged the basement. If you fire that weapon, the static spark from the muzzle flash triggers the sensors I placed in the vents. We all go up together."
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A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the room. The red emergency lights cast long, bloody shadows across the floor. Katherine’s finger rested on the trigger, frozen. Julian was on his knees, holding a trembling Leo against his chest. Sarah was tied to the chair, bleeding. And the smell of natural gas began to faintly seep through the vents, filling the room with a sweet, lethal scent.
One spark. One trigger pull. One wrong move by anyone in the room, and the entire four-story structure would become a towering inferno. No one moved. No one breathed. The standoff was an absolute, explosive deadlock, and the timer was ticking.
