Chapter 5 - The Fortress Falls
Vincent didn't waste a heartbeat. He fired a disabling round into the mercenary’s knee, dropping him howling to the floor, and sprinted for the private service elevator shaft. The main power was dead, but the manual override counterweight was intact.
He wrenched the access door open, grasped the steel emergency cable with his gloved hands, and vaulted himself into the vertical dark, pulling himself up three stories with raw, adrenaline-fueled power. Every muscle burned, but all he saw behind his eyes was Clara’s fragile face and her little hand clutching his sleeve.
On the third floor, the steel-reinforced door of the panic suite was already sparking.
Two men using thermal-lance cutters were slicing directly through the secondary magnetic locks. A third man stood watch, weapon leveled down the corridor.
Vincent kicked through the shaft's maintenance grate, bursting into the hallway like an apparition. Before the guard could react, Vincent discharged his weapon twice through the man's chest rig, dropping him instantly.
The two men at the door dropped their cutting torches, scrambling for their sidearms. Vincent didn't give them room to breathe. He closed the ten-foot distance in two strides, using the momentum of his sprint to slam the nearest operative headfirst into the scorched metal door frame. The man collapsed, unconscious.
The remaining mercenary lunged forward with a serrated combat knife, slashing across Vincent’s torso. The blade cut clean through Vincent’s black shirt, opening a shallow, burning red line across his ribs, but Vincent didn't even flinch. He absorbed the pain, grabbed the operative’s wrist, and twisted it until the bone audibly cracked, tearing the blade from his grip.
Vincent drove a brutal knee into the man's sternum, driving all the air from his lungs, before tossing him over the mezzanine railing down to the marble floor below.
The hallway fell dead silent again, save for Vincent’s ragged breathing and the smell of ozone from the half-severed door locks.
""Lena! Open the hatch! It’s Vincent!"" he called out, his voice hoarse.
The heavy steel door shuddered and swung inward a fraction of an inch. Lena peeked through the gap, her face streaked with tears, clutching a kitchen cleaver with trembling white knuckles.
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Behind her, seated calmly amidst a circle of leather-bound encyclopedias, Clara was looking at the scorched doorway. In her lap, however, she wasn't holding a stuffed toy.
She was holding an open, antique silver locket that Vincent had never seen before—a locket containing a photograph of Julian Vance, with the words: To my dearest daughter.
