antiviral software is better than anyone else’s.”
“I mostly agree,” Mason said, watching the monitor as Sparrow rode upward in the elevator. “Fucking make it,” he muttered.
“Why only mostly?” I asked.
“I’m not fucking full of myself,” Mason said as a countermeasure. “Morehead has gotten this far in and out of the Order because she’s smart, very smart. And other than knowing about Jettison’s flying skills, we don’t know what he’s capable of. Our antiviral software can stop anything that’s commonplace, most, if not all, of what is exceptional. I’m worried about what we’ve never seen before.”
The lit boxes were down to one or two dozen, out of hundreds of thousands. The muscles in my neck and shoulders pulled tight as I alternated my attention between the power grid and the elevator. Up it moved. We watched the monitor feed from outside our steel door. Finally, the doors opened.
I held my breath until Sparrow stepped forward and placed his hand in front of the scanner. The steel door began to move at the same time the boxes went totally dark.
“Fuck,” Mason yelled as he bolted toward the door, throwing himself between the door and jamb.
“Stop,” Sparrow yelled from the other side. “It will fucking cut you in half.”
Patrick and I gripped the door as the powerful motor did what it was supposed to do, close. My fingers ached as we both pulled. The door hesitated and before we knew what happened, Mason managed to get out of our command center and to the man he’d sworn to protect.
Patrick and I released the door before losing our fingers. It slid shut.
“Fuck.” It was the only word I could articulate as I hurried back to the monitors and program. The screens flashed, but our battery backups wouldn’t allow them to crash. The lights throughout the entire building blinked off and then on.
The roar of cooling fans accelerated. “The generator kicked on,” Patrick said. As he did, the steel door opened and Sparrow and Mason entered.
“Ten seconds tops,” Mason said.
“Did you think I wanted to tell your wife or your sister you were cut in half for a door?” I asked.
“I didn’t do it for a door.” Mason walked toward his workstation. “We have ten fucking seconds to search and I mean thoroughly. Something happened. We need to know what it was.”
Alarms began to sound.
“What the hell is happening?” Sparrow asked.
“Fire in the residential garage.” It wasn’t our private garage, but one for the other people who lived on any one of the over ninety floors. “The sprinklers are working.”
“Fire in the overflow garage,” Mason said.
Sparrow paced back and forth as small fires erupted only to be put out. One was in an office suite fifty floors up. There was another in a sandwich shop on the second floor. More alarms sounded.
“Fucking distractions,” Sparrow said. He turned to Patrick. “Tell me you have 1 covered.”
“It’s covered.”
Alarms.
Sirens.
Flashing lights.
Every small incident was immediately countered by the safety systems installed in the building. The local news was reporting that the fire department had been called.
“Check the fucking back door,” Sparrow said. “Morehead wants our attention on this shit. What is she doing?”
“Shit,” I said, my heart dropping. “Two fucking possibilities. We had a welcome team on 1 and they fucking chose door number 2.”
Everyone gathered behind my chair as Morehead, Jettison, and two men I didn’t know rode up the exterior elevator to the penthouse.
“Fucking make it stop.”
My fingers feverishly moved over the keyboard. “I can’t. I have no control.”
Patrick sat down at his workstation and also typed.
“They’re moving higher.”
“Another thirty seconds and they’re to the entry.”
My teeth ached as my jaw clenched. “No fucking way am I this close to the man who hurt my wife and I’m sitting here.”
As I opened a drawer near my desk and reached for my gun, Mason stood in my way. “Fuck no.” He pointed his finger at my chest. “Where is your vest?”
“I don’t have time.” I looked over at the screen. “The damn doors are going to open and they’ll be in the fucking penthouse.”
“No, they won’t,” Patrick said. “I overrode it.” He let out a sigh as the elevator began to descend.
“Hold them a little longer,” I called as I went back to the locker room for my vest. Sparrow and Mason were a step behind. “Make them think they have control.”
“Let me do this,” Mason said. “I owe Morehead the honor of dying from my bullet.” He turned to Sparrow. “Your place is in this fucking control