Chapter 3 - The Extraction Protocol-3
Before Travis could lower the wooden rod a second time, the physical environment of the room fractured with a violent force. I lunged across the threshold, my large frame moving with the velocity of an unguided concussive shell, my right shoulder driving straight into Travis’s chest to hurl his broad body weight clear across the master suite pylon. He hit the drywall with a dull, heavy thud, his automatic carbine—which he had kept concealed beneath his suit jacket lining—spinning off across the floorboards to clatter into the dark waters of the master bath drainage trench.
I dropped to my knees, throwing my arms protectively around Noah’s shivering body, pulling his tiny face against my utility jacket while my gray eyes locked onto my wife’s frozen features with a dangerous, unquenchable fire of pure judicial fury.
"Who is this man, Rachel?" I roared, my voice dropping into a low, gravelly baritone that boomed through the plaster ceilings like thunder. "Why did you let him hit our child like that? Why are your corporate data folders resting flat on my bed while our son is bleeding in the dark?"
Rachel took a rapid, frantic step backward, her designer heels catching the edge of the sheepskin rug as her face went entirely paper-white under the harsh light of the ceiling chandelier. Her fingers shook so violently the crystal glass slipped from her hand, shattering into clean white fragments across the hardwood floorboards.
"Andrew... please, it’s an administrative misunderstanding," she stammered, her high-society elegance completely evaporating into a jagged, breathless whimper of pure primitive panic. "Travis... he was only attempting to enforce a routine compliance lockdown on the network tokens. Noah wasn't supposed to be inside the master suite layout today."
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Noah finally spoke, his tiny fingers tightening around my sleeve with a primitive strength that grounded my panic, a single tear slicing through the plaster dust and dried blood on his soft cheek.
"Dad..." the boy whispered, his raspy voice trembling uncontrollably as he pointed his hand toward the unzipped utility seam of the wardrobe base. "He’s Mom's boyfriend. I... I accidentally saw them playing with the little black boxes inside your bedroom while you were at the office pylon. They were writing numbers on the white papers."
