Chapter 12 - Breach of Contract
Leo plummeted through the cloud layer, banking sharply with tiny micro-adjustments of his arms. The icy wind roared around his protective goggles, but his pulse remained steady at a resting infant rate.
Directly below, the compound's automated anti-air turrets tracked his descent, but their sensors repeatedly misidentified him as an oversized alpine raven, refusing to expend multi-million-dollar missiles on local fauna.
At three hundred feet, Leo deployed his deceleration chute. The small square canopy snapped open with a sharp crack, arresting his descent just above the central skylight of the vault.
He unclipped the harness mid-air, landing lightly on the reinforced glass dome. From his tactical pouch, he produced a diamond-tipped glass cutter and a pressurized canister of liquid nitrogen.
Within seconds, the extreme cold made the thick glass brittle as sugar. Leo struck it once with his tiny brass pen. The panel shattered inward.
Leo dropped gracefully into the center of the subterranean control room, landing squarely in the middle of a polished marble floor surrounded by armed guards.
At the far end of the console stood Julian Cross, fingers hovering above the global reset key.
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""How?"" Cross stammered, stepping back in horror as the tiny boy stood up, adjusted his tie, and brushed frost from his shoulders. ""Security said you were grounded!""
""Security has poor pattern recognition,"" Leo said, taking a slow step forward. ""Your terms have expired, Julian.""
