Chapter 8 - The Journalist's Fortress
The back alleys were a maze, but Lily’s incredible memory guided them flawlessly.
They emerged three blocks away from Thomas’s apartment building.
The building was an old, concrete structure with heavy iron gates and security cameras everywhere.
Max buzzed the intercom, whispering a code phrase he had learned on the streets.
After a tense moment of silence, the heavy iron door buzzed and clicked open.
They rushed inside and took the freight elevator to the top floor.
Thomas was waiting for them in the hallway, holding a shotgun and looking incredibly paranoid.
He was a grumpy, disheveled man with wild gray hair and thick glasses.
Max quickly explained the situation and handed over the silver flash drive.
Thomas plugged it into his secure server, his eyes widening as the files populated on his massive monitors.
He muttered that this was the holy grail he had been chasing for his entire career.
He told them he could upload the files to multiple international news agencies and federal servers simultaneously.
Once the upload was complete, the syndicate would be exposed worldwide, and Evelyn would be finished.
But the upload would take exactly twenty minutes due to the massive file sizes and encryption layers.
And worse, the upload would instantly trace back to Thomas’s IP address.
The moment he pressed the button, Evelyn’s tech team would know exactly where they were.
Thomas looked at Arthur, warning him that the next twenty minutes would be a war zone.
Arthur nodded grimly, accepting the reality of the situation.
He told Thomas to start the upload immediately.
Thomas slammed his finger onto the enter key, and a loading bar appeared on the screen.
Ten seconds later, the building's alarms began to blare violently.
Evelyn’s forces were already breaching the front gates.
Arthur picked up a heavy wrench from Thomas’s toolbox and stood by the reinforced door.
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He told Lily and Max to hide in the reinforced panic room at the back of the apartment.
This time, he was not running away.
