Chapter 5 - Resurfacing
The impact with the black river felt like slamming into concrete. The breath exploded from Elena’s lungs in a cloud of silver bubbles, the shock of the icy water driving deep into her bruised ribs. Darkness swallowed her whole. The weight of her wet trench coat pulled her downward into the merciless current.
Fight, her father’s voice whispered through the roar in her ears. Elena, the river only takes what surrenders.
With agonizing strokes, she kicked her legs, clawing her way toward the faint ripples of light above. Her hand still gripped the steel cylinder with desperate tenacity. She broke through the surface, gasping violently for air, choking on brackish water.
The current dragged her downriver, away from the bridge where Victor’s flashlight frantically swept the water's surface. He was searching for a corpse. Let him report to Kevin that she had drowned. Let them uncork their champagne.
Elena let the current carry her half a mile downstream until the river curved into an abandoned industrial canal. Her boots touched the slimy gravel of the bank, and she hauled herself out of the water on hands and knees, shivering uncontrollably. Her skin was blue, her teeth chattering so violently she could barely breathe.
She dragged herself toward the rusty corrugated metal of a decommissioned textile warehouse. Pulling out the burner phone she had triple-wrapped in waterproof plastic inside her coat, she saw the screen light up with one bar of signal.
She dialed the number Arthur Vance had given her.
"Arthur," she whispered, her voice shaking from hypothermia. "Victor tried to kill me at the bridge. They think I'm in the river."
There was a heavy pause on the other end, followed by the sound of papers shuffling. Arthur’s voice was grim. "Kevin has just called an emergency board meeting for 8:00 AM tomorrow. He filed an affidavit claiming you abandoned the company and stole forty million dollars in proprietary code. He’s petitioning to revoke your shares under the moral turpitude clause."
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"He has no code without my encryption key," Elena spat, leaning against the cold warehouse wall. "I have the first cylinder."
"Then you need to find the second one before dawn," Arthur warned. "Because at 8:00 AM, Kevin signs the Vanguard merger, and if that ink dries, not even the Supreme Court can undo it."
