They dropped onto a grated floor. The air was cool, sterile. Red lights pulsed along the corridor like a heartbeat. Missax held up three fingers. Two. One.
The vault door opened with a sigh.
He smiled. It was the smile of a man who had already won.
Her blood turned to ice. Only one person could send a message through her isolated systems: Kael, her former hacker and the only person who knew she was still alive. And “you owe me” was a debt she could not refuse.
They didn’t make it out through the shaft. Instead, Missax took a different flaw: the emergency plasma vent. It would eject them into the ocean two hundred meters below the rock. The fall would kill anyone else.
“The Helix Key isn’t stable outside its field for more than 90 seconds,” Missax shouted over the noise. “You designed it that way. Remember?”
Craven Moorehead , known for high-production-value adult dramas.