Read Chapter 12: The Break-In

The key card felt like a live wire in Alex’s palm. The BT exchange loomed ahead, a brutalist hulk of grey concrete and blacked-out windows squatting in the Clerkenwell dark. Felix stood beside him, breathing shallow, his eyes fixed on the single light burning in the ground-floor lobby.

“You sure about this?” Felix muttered.

“No,” Alex said. “But I’m out of options.”

The card clicked against the reader. A green LED blinked once. The lock disengaged with a soft, hydraulic sigh. Alex pushed the door open, and they slipped inside.

The lobby smelled of dust and ozone. A faded BT logo peeled off the far wall. No guards. No cameras sweeping. Just an abandoned console and a lift with a cracked glass door. Elena’s intel said the relay node was sub-level three, and that the old building was all but forgotten by the network engineers who had decommissioned it years ago. Forgot seems to be their specialty, Alex thought.

They took the stairs. Felix led, his sneakers squeaking on the concrete steps, his breath hitching as they descended into the fluorescent hum of the lower floors. The air grew colder, denser, heavy with the weight of buried cable and dead signal.

Sub-level three opened into a long corridor lined with server racks, their lights extinguished. A single console glowed at the far end, casting a pale blue arc across the floor. The data core fragment sat in a reinforced chassis, humming like a sleeping animal.

“That’s it,” Alex said.

He crossed the room, Felix shadowing him. His chest ached with every step, the tunnel fight still fresh in his ribs. He pushed it down, focused on the console. Elena’s instructions were clear: bypass the firmware lock, extract the fragment, get out. He pulled a cable from his pocket and plugged it into the console’s maintenance port.

The screen blinked to life. A login prompt appeared.

“Three tries, Alex,” Felix said. “You know this is rigged.”

Alex ignored him. He typed the sequence Elena had given him: the date of Nightingale’s Company registration, a string of zeros, the broker’s own initials. The console hesitated, then opened a directory tree. Files flickered past. He located the fragment—a compressed archive labelled N-CORE/4—and began the transfer.

The progress bar crawled. Eleven percent.

“Something’s off,” Felix whispered.

Alex’s fingers froze on the keyboard. He listened. The hum was louder. Not the servers—something else. The unmistakable whine of hydraulics.

The lift.

“We’ve got company,” Alex said.

He yanked the cable, but the transfer was only at forty-three percent. He swore, slammed the cable back in. Felix was already moving toward the door, pressing himself against the frame, peering up the stairwell.

“Two, maybe three,” Felix hissed. “Armed.”

Alex’s mind raced. The transfer hit sixty-two percent. The whine of the lift died. Heavy boots echoed down the stairwell.

“Alex. Now.”

“It’s not done.”

“It’s never done. Go.”

Alex ripped the cable out. The console beeped a warning, but he didn’t care. He grabbed a spare drive from his pocket and jammed it into the port. A partial file copied in under four seconds. He pulled it free, pocketed it, and turned to run.

The stairwell door slammed open.

A man in black tactical gear levelled a carbine at them. Behind him, another figure moved into the corridor, torchlight sweeping the racks.

“Hands where I can see them.”

Felix moved first. He lunged sideways, knocking a server rack into the shooter’s path. The carbine barked, a single round that ricocheted off the concrete ceiling, showering dust. Alex ran for the corridor, Felix at his heels.

They reached the stairwell. Alex took the steps two at a time, his lungs burning, his ribs screaming. Felix was behind him, closer than expected. Too close.

Then a shot rang out, louder this time, and Felix grunted.

Alex turned.

Felix was on the stairs, one hand clamped over his thigh, blood seeping between his fingers. His face was white, shocked.

“Run,” Felix said. “Run.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Yes, you are.” Felix pulled himself up the step, grimacing. “They want the data, not me. Get out.”

A boot scraped above them. The guards were closing. Alex looked at Felix, at the blood pooling on the concrete, at the hard clarity in his eyes.

He ran.

Up the stairwell, through the lobby, out into the night. The cold air hit him like a slap. He didn’t slow. He sprinted down the alley beside the exchange, boots slapping on wet asphalt, lungs searing. Behind him, he heard the door slam open again.

He didn’t look back.

He found a chained gate, vaulted it, and landed hard on the other side. His chest screamed. He pushed on, weaving through the backstreets until his legs gave out and he collapsed against a dumpster, gasping.

His hand went to his pocket. The drive was there. He pulled it out, clutched it like a lifeline.

Then he heard footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.

A guard stepped into the mouth of the alley, carbine raised.

“Drop it.”

Alex’s hand trembled. He thought of Sarah’s photograph, of Elena’s brother, of the name on the Orchard list. He looked at the drive.

He dropped it.

The guard scooped it up, backed away, and disappeared into the dark.

Alex lay against the dumpster, alone, breath shallow, ribs aching, the taste of copper in his mouth. Felix was bleeding somewhere in a dead building. The drive was gone. The dawn update was hours away.

And he had nothing left.