Chapter 23: Read-Only

  The heavy blast doors of the London Grid Authority’s basement server room were sealed shut, the biometric lock glowing an angry, persistent red.

  Alex didn't bother looking for a keycard. His Architect vision flared, the green code reflecting in his eyes. He reached out and placed a hand on the cold steel.

  [ASSET: BLAST_DOOR_01] [STATE: LOCKED_SECURE]

  [EDIT: STATE = OPEN_OVERRIDE]

  The thick internal deadbolts violently retracted with a sequence of heavy metallic clanks. The pneumatic seals hissed, and the massive doors slid apart.

  The server room was bathed in the harsh, flickering blue light of a dozen Helios portable data-siphons plugged directly into the LGA mainframe. Four elite mercenaries immediately raised their heavy pulse-rifles, the red laser sights painting Alex’s chest.

  Standing behind them, calmly unplugging a thick, fiber-optic hard drive from the central console, was the Auditor.

  He wore an impeccably tailored dark grey suit, but strapped over his shoulders was a heavy, glowing harness. It looked like a high-tech Faraday cage built from salvaged Aurelian crystal and Earth military hardware.

  "User_01, I presume," the Auditor said smoothly, his voice devoid of any panic. He slipped the hard drive into a secure, lead-lined briefcase. "CEO Vance sends his regards."

  "Drop the drive," Alex said, his voice echoing with the strange, resonant bass of the Golden Code. He didn't raise his hands. He just focused his vision on the mercenaries' pulse-rifles, preparing to turn them into solid blocks of iron like he had done in the lobby.

  [ASSET: H-DYN_RIFLE x4]

  [EDIT: MATERIAL = ... ERROR]

  Alex blinked. His Architect vision suddenly fuzzed with violent red static.

  [ACCESS DENIED: LOCALIZED READ-ONLY ZONE DETECTED]

  Alex stumbled back half a step, a sharp spike of pain lancing through his head. The harness on the Auditor’s back was humming with a sickly, corrupted yellow light. It was projecting a ten-foot dome of localized DRM—Digital Rights Management. Inside that dome, reality was locked.

  "Did you really think a trillion-dollar tech conglomerate wouldn't patch their vulnerabilities?" the Auditor smirked, adjusting his glasses. "This is an Aegis Null-Field Generator. Inside this radius, your root access is revoked. You're just a man in a wet jacket."

  The Auditor snapped his fingers. "Execute him."

  The four mercenaries opened fire.

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  Alex dove hard to the right, rolling behind a massive, humming row of LGA server racks just as a hail of bullets shredded the concrete where he had been standing.

  "Alex! My feeds just went blind!" Sarah’s voice panicked over the PA system above his head. "Whatever they just turned on down there, it completely severed my connection to the room's cameras!"

  "They brought a jammer!" Alex yelled, pressing his back against the vibrating server rack as bullets chewed through the aluminum casing inches from his head. "It's locking down the physical layer! I can't edit anything inside their bubble!"

  "If it's an Earth-tech jammer, it runs on electricity!" Sarah fired back, her fingers flying across her keyboard in Soho. "I can't see them, but I control the building's power grid! Tell me where they are!"

  "Center aisle! Pushing toward the east wall!" Alex shouted.

  "Hold on to something!"

  Sarah bypassed the LGA’s safety regulators. She grabbed the raw, incoming electrical feed from the London grid and violently funneled a massive, unmitigated power surge directly into the floor panels of the center aisle.

  The server room floor exploded.

  A blinding arc of blue electricity violently arced from the floor grates, striking the mercenaries. Because they were inside the Null-Field, Alex couldn't edit them—but raw, physical electricity didn't need code to execute. The surge threw two of the mercenaries backward, their armor smoking as they crashed into the wall.

  The Auditor grunted, his Aegis harness sparking wildly as it struggled to absorb the massive electrical spike. The sickly yellow dome flickered, thinning for just a fraction of a second.

  That's the window, Alex thought.

  Alex sprinted out from behind cover. He didn't try to edit the Auditor. He edited the concrete ceiling directly above him, which was outside the Null-Field's radius.

  [ASSET: LGA_COOLING_MAIN] [STATE: INTACT]

  [EDIT: STATE = RUPTURED]

  A massive, high-pressure industrial coolant pipe in the ceiling violently burst open. Thousands of gallons of freezing, liquid nitrogen-laced coolant crashed down like a waterfall directly onto the Auditor and the remaining mercenaries.

  The Aegis harness hissed as the freezing liquid flooded its exposed vents.

  [AEGIS GENERATOR: THERMAL SHOCK DETECTED]

  [NULL-FIELD: OFFLINE]

  The yellow dome collapsed.

  Alex didn't hesitate. He was already moving. As the Auditor desperately clawed at his freezing harness, Alex stepped into his personal space. His eyes burned with brilliant green light.

  He reached out and placed his hand directly over the Auditor's heart.

  He didn't kill him. He just looked at the encrypted, corporate cyberware running through the man's nervous system.

  [ASSET: HELIOS_NEURAL_LINK]

  [COMMAND: UNINSTALL]

  The Auditor’s eyes rolled back in his head. The corporate firewall violently unspooled from his brain, dropping him to the wet floor like a puppet with its strings cut. He was alive, but his connection to the Helios network was permanently severed.

  Alex stood over the unconscious corporate hit squad, his breath pluming in the freezing coolant fog. He reached down and picked up the lead-lined briefcase containing the LGA hard drives.

  "Sarah," Alex breathed, tapping his earpiece. "I got the drives. The anomaly logs are secure."

  "Thank god," Sarah sighed, the sheer relief palpable in her voice. "Get out of there, Alex. The police are going to be swarming that building in less than two minutes."

  Alex turned to leave, but his Architect vision caught a faint, blinking red light on the Auditor's wrist console. It wasn't a jammer. It was an outbound data transmission that had completed right before the coolant hit.

  [UPLOAD COMPLETE: DESTINATION VANGUARD]

  [PAYLOAD: BRONZE_DOOR_COORDINATES_LONDON]

  Alex’s blood ran cold. They hadn't just come here to erase the data. They had come to locate the physical door.

  "Sarah," Alex said, breaking into a dead sprint toward the stairs. "We have a problem. Helios just found the Heron Quay door. We need to get back to the Bronze Door before they blow it open."

  The Race is On!

  Helios Dynamics has the location of the London Bronze Door! If they breach it, they can send a massive corporate army directly into the Aurelian server. Alex and Sarah have won the battle at the LGA, but the war for Earth is just beginning.

  Meanwhile, back in the Aurelian server, two massive confrontations are about to boil over.