Chapter 10 - Safehouse Zero
The sewer conduit led into an old subterranean subway station, decommissioned during the Cold War and forgotten beneath the city’s financial district. Silas had prepared this station years ago: dry clothes, medical supplies, emergency rations, and a wall lined with server racks running on independent diesel generators.
Clara sat on an old army cot wrapped in a thick wool blanket, holding a steaming mug of black tea. Her mind felt completely detached from her body. Six hours ago, she was worrying about whether her manager would dock her pay for dropping a tray of champagne. Now, she was an international fugitive.
Silas entered the room wearing clean black fatigue pants and a dark Henley, having stitched the gash on his arm with needle and thread without making a sound. He set a laptop on the small metal table before her.
"Drink your tea," he said. "We have three hours before dawn. That's when Arthur Moretti arrives at the Citadel Tower."
"What is the Citadel Tower?" she asked, her voice raspy.
"Moretti's private fortress," Silas answered, tapping the keyboard to bring up architectural schematics of a sixty-story skyscraper downtown. "The vault is on the sub-level five, beneath bedrock. Marcus was hunting you because Moretti gave him an ultimatum: bring David Vance's key, or be fed to the furnace."
"And my father?" Clara asked, looking up. "Is he really in that building?"
Silas brought up a grainy security still from an interior elevator camera taken forty-eight hours prior. A frail, gray-haired man in handcuffs was being escorted by two guards.
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Clara pressed her fingers to the screen. Her eyes flooded with tears. "Dad."
"They captured him in Zurich two days ago," Silas said quietly. "He held out until they located you. Now, we go get him back."
