Chapter 5 - The Core Extraction-5
"Don't move, Mrs. Vance," Marcus Croft hissed through his throat microphone, his voice a cold, mechanical rasp that carried zero human empathy. He held a sleek, black digital data tablet in his right hand, his eyes locked onto the screen. "The sixty-four-character decryption token... your son is going to repeat it into this interface recorder right now. If he misses a single character, or if you attempt to touch that dropped weapon on the floor... I will paint this entire concrete block with his brains before the backup generators can even flicker back to life."
Oliver didn't flinch. He sat straight against my chest, his small fingers tightening around the golden butterscotch wrapper in his pocket, his hazel eyes locking onto the barrel of the automatic carbine with a profound, terrifying maturity that made my heart break into a million jagged pieces.
"The numbers are 4-1-4-Alpha-Alpha-Sierra-Delta," Oliver said, his young voice ringing out through the quiet, smoky room with an absolute clarity that made Marcus Croft freeze mid-step.
"Stop, Oliver! Don't say it!" I screamed, trying to block his mouth with my hand, but he pushed my fingers away with a fierce, unexpected strength.
"Keep going, boy," Croft commanded, his eyes flares with an insatiable, predatory hunger as the tablet interface began to validate the character sequence. "Give me the remaining forty-eight digits, and I’ll let your mother walk out of this precinct alive."
"No, he won't, Marcus," Detective Miller’s voice suddenly rang out from the darkness of the corner locker alcove.
Before Croft could turn the barrel of his carbine, Miller launched his heavy frame forward through the smoke. He didn't fire his weapon; he slammed his heavy steel tactical flashlight straight into the center of Croft's carbon-fiber oxygen mask, shattering the plastic seal and driving the private operator back into the shattered frame of the vault door with a violent, concussive force.
The automatic carbine fired a wild, uncontrolled three-round burst into the concrete ceiling panels, showering the room in a rain of white plaster and sparks as the two men crashed onto the floorboards in a brutal, chaotic tangle of limbs and fury.
May you like
"Mrs. Vance! Take the boy and run to the maintenance shaft!" Miller roared through the dust, his forearm crushing Croft’s throat against the steel pylon as the private security operators outside began to flood the corridor, their heavy boots slamming a rapid rhythm against the concrete.
I didn't wait for a secondary command line. I scooped Oliver into my arms, grabbed the digital tablet that Croft had dropped onto the table desk during the impact, and sprinted through the shattered rear utility hatch of the interrogation room, disappearing down into the dark, wind-howling bowels of the building’s subterranean drainage matrix.
