Chapter 12 - Infiltrating the Foundation
The rain had turned into a thick, clinging mist by 5:00 AM when Arthur’s van pulled into the subterranean parking garage beneath the Vance Foundation tower in downtown. The streets above were dead quiet, but the twenty-story glass monolith hummed with the quiet power of old money and deep corruption.
Julian sat in the passenger seat, wearing an old rain jacket of Arthur’s over his rumpled suit. In the back, Clara lay resting on a makeshift cot, her skin pale and sheen with fever sweat, but her eyes sharp and clear. Dr. Mercer was monitoring her vitals from the jump seat, a bag of saline dripping slowly into Clara’s vein.
"You shouldn't be here," Julian said, turning around to take Clara’s clammy hand. "You should be resting."
"I am not letting her take our daughter, Julian," Clara said, her voice weak but unyielding. "I watched that woman look at my baby like she was a stock certificate. You get that drive. I’ll make sure the judge sees it."
Arthur tapped the steering wheel. "The server room is on the sub-level two, right below the executive suites. It uses biometric access registered to direct Vance bloodlines. Victoria never updated the protocol to remove my original profile because doing so would have required a total system audit—which would have flagged the foundation's missing assets."
"So your hand opens the door," Julian said.
"And your corporate security credentials get us past the main lobby elevator," Arthur replied, pulling two small digital storage drives from his pocket. "Once we plug this in, the decryption script will copy the 1994 transfer ledgers and the recent IVF alteration logs. But we only have eight minutes before the system triggers a silent alarm to Victoria’s private security firm."
Julian checked his watch. "The court convenes in three hours. Let's move."
Leaving Dr. Mercer with Clara and Maya in the idling van, Julian and Arthur slipped through the service entrance. The familiar smell of polished marble and expensive central heating struck Julian as they bypassed the outer security desk using his executive card.
They took the maintenance lift down to Sub-Level 2. The heavy steel door marked BIOMETRIC ARCHIVES loomed ahead, bathed in the hum of high-end cooling units.
Arthur stepped forward, pressing his right thumb against the optical scanner. The small red light blinked once, twice, and then turned a solid, glowing green.
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The magnetic locks clicked open. But as the heavy door swung inward, the lights inside the server room snapped on.
Sitting behind the central monitoring terminal, sipping coffee from a porcelain cup, was Victoria.
