Chapter 5 - The Subterranean Vault
"Evelyn!" I rushed over, kneeling beside her. Her face was pale, her breathing shallow and ragged.
"Mark..." she gasped, clutching my jacket collar. "You... you made it..."
"Where does this door go?!" I asked, looking at the heavy steel vault before us.
"It’s... it’s the primary server room for the Aegis underground facility," she whispered, her voice failing. "It connects directly to the Oak Park Medical Center basement. Every video log, every medical record, every illegal human trial document is stored on the central mainframe inside..."
"What's the code?" I asked frantically as heavy pounding sounded from the utility staircase at the end of the hall. Vance's men were breaching the fire door.
Evelyn reached into her pocket with trembling fingers and pulled out a keycard covered in dried blood, along with a scrap of paper. "Type... 9-0-4-2... swipe the card... and upload the ledger into the external terminal. It will trigger an automatic leak to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cyber-crime portal..."
"Evelyn, come with me, I can carry you inside!" I urged, hooking my arms under her shoulders.
"No..." she shook her head weaky, a sad, tragic smile touching her lips. "I helped them build this monster, Mark. I took their money for five years... I carried those bags out every morning because I was too much of a coward to face what I was hiding. This is my penance. Go! Lock the door behind you!"
She shoved the blood-stained keycard into my palm.
I scrambled to the keypad, punched in 9-0-4-2, and swiped the card. The heavy hydraulic locks hissed, and the massive vault door swung inward.
I grabbed Evelyn by her vest and pulled her inside just as the utility door at the end of the corridor blew open in a shower of sparks!
May you like
I slammed the vault door shut from the inside, dropping the heavy manual security bars into place seconds before bullets rattled uselessly against the reinforced steel exterior.
We were inside the heart of Aegis Bio-Pharma.
