PART 11 :

Reyes and Park understood. They moved into position on either side of the branch entrance and Gabriel moved to the junction center and called Rowan. “I’m at the utility junction,” he said, barely above a whisper. “North branch has occupied personnel. At least two voices.” “The north branch connects to the sublevel one access corridor, which is 20 m from the server room.

” A pause. “They’re between you and the hardware.” “How many entrances to the server room?” “Two. The standard access door on the western face, which is also accessible from the main building interior, and the service panel on the eastern wall, which opens into the utility corridor system.” A pause. “The service panel won’t be on their map unless Devereaux showed them.

” “Did Devereaux build the service panel?” “No. It predates the hub by 15 years.” Gabriel looked at the northern branch entrance, looked at Reyes. “Other route to the server room’s eastern service panel.” Rowan was quiet for 3 seconds. The east junction behind you. Take the eastern branch 40 m, then there’s a vertical access shaft, ladder 12 ft, that opens into the sub-level mechanical room.

The mechanical room shares a wall with the server room. The service panel is accessible from inside the mechanical room through a utility interface port. A beat. It’s a tight fit. How tight? 40 cm. Gabriel looked at Park, who was the broader of the two. Reyes comes with me. Park northern branch. You’re not going in. You’re making noise.

He held Park’s eyes until he was certain the instruction was received. Enough to convince them something is coming from the north. Then you pull back and wait. Park nodded once. The eastern branch was 43 m, not 40, and the vertical shaft was 15 ft, and the ladder had two rungs missing. Gabriel felt the absence of the first one with his boot and adjusted before his weight transferred and felt the absence of the second one the hard way, his arm taking the full load for one lurching second before his boot found

the next solid rung below. The impact traveled up through his shoulder and he kept moving. The mechanical room was low ceilinged and occupied by two large HVAC units that hadn’t been serviced recently. The utility interface port was in the eastern wall, a panel approximately 40 cm square, secured with four screws standard head.

Gabriel looked at it and then at his phone and said very quietly, I’m at the interface port. 40 cm, Rowan confirmed. You’ll need to go in at an angle, right shoulder first. The service panel release is on the inside face of the wall cavity, left side as you enter. It’s a lever, not a button. And on the other side of the panel? Server room.

Rack seven is 4 m from the panel entry point directly ahead. What’s the room’s current status? I can’t see inside. The camera system for the sub-level went offline 40 minutes ago. A pause that had something in it. They cut the feeds, which means they know the server room is the target and they’re managing their visibility inside it. Managing visibility meant they’d positioned people in the server room itself and didn’t want a record of it.

Gabriel looked at the interface port and thought about the 4-minute execution window and the 19 hours and 11 minutes remaining on a clock that didn’t care about any of the complications between now and then. He heard it from the northern branch below. Park. Doing what he’d been told. A single loud collision of something metal against pipe followed by footsteps, followed by silence, then another collision further away pulling toward the north junction.

Movement in the mechanical room wall. Transmitted through the concrete, barely perceptible but present. Someone in the server room repositioning toward the sound. Gabriel removed the interface port panel in 11 seconds, stripped the screws, set the panel down without letting it touch the floor loudly, and went in right shoulder first.

The wall cavity was 30 cm of conduit and dust and the faint smell of electrical insulation. He moved through it in the dark with one hand tracking the interior wall face, found the lever with his left hand, and pressed it. The service panel on the far side disengaged. He pushed through into the server room low and fast and came up against rack three instead of rack seven.

The room was longer than the schematic had suggested where he’d entered at an angle. The server racks ran in parallel rows floor to ceiling blue indicator lights blinking in the near dark. The room was cold the way server rooms were always cold. The HVAC running a constant low current of refrigerated air that made the sweat on the back of his neck immediate and uncomfortable.

Two men. He registered them in the first second. One near the western access door and one at rack position five. Both oriented toward the northern wall where the sound from the utility passage was still faintly audible. They were armed and they were professionals. The way they held their positions rather than crowding together told Gabriel that much.

They’d been trained to hold a spread. He had about two seconds before the one at rack five completed his visual sweep and rotated far enough to pick up the service panel opening. He took the one at rack five first because rack five was between him and rack seven and leaving someone armed at his back while he worked.

A four-minute cable connection was a calculation that didn’t resolve in his favor. Three steps, fast and quiet on the cold floor, and he hit the man with the full controlled impact of someone who had decided the math required it. Elbow first into the base of the skull, weight following through. The man going down and not coming back up in the next several minutes.

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