Chapter 7 - The Final Desperation
The silence in the grand hall was heavy, thick with the adrenaline of a war just won.
But a cornered animal is the most dangerous kind.
Down in the wine cellar, the tactical guard assigned to watch Marcus had made a fatal error. He had stepped too close to the bleeding lawyer to check his zip-ties.
Marcus, a man who paid for elite Krav Maga training on weekends, lunged. He headbutted the guard with his shattered nose, ignoring the blinding pain, and managed to wrap his bound hands around the guard’s neck, choking him out against the steel racks.
Marcus frantically searched the unconscious guard, finding a combat knife. He sawed through the plastic zip-ties, his wrists bleeding.
He grabbed the guard’s sidearm and radio.
Upstairs, Julian was holding Elise’s hand, watching Vivian weep on the floor.
"Julian," Marcus’s voice crackled over the radio clipped to Julian’s belt.
Julian froze.
"You think you won?" Marcus panted, his voice wet with blood. "You think you can just erase me? I built this empire with you! I wiped your messes! I made you a god!"
"Marcus," Julian said, unclipping the radio. "It's over. The FBI is ten minutes away. Put the gun down."
"If I'm going down, I'm taking the crown jewel with me," Marcus laughed, a manic, hysterical sound. "I'm in the server room, Julian. Keller gave me the override codes before you shot him. I just initiated the estate's purge protocol."
Elise gasped, her grip on Julian’s hand turning to iron.
"What is the purge protocol?" Julian demanded, looking at Elise.
"It's the fire-suppression system," Elise said, sheer panic flooding her eyes. "If the servers overheat, the system seals the blast doors and floods the subterranean levels and the ground floor with Halon gas to kill the fire. It displaces all the oxygen."
"In three minutes, every living thing on the first floor is going to suffocate," Marcus taunted. "And the blast doors are already locked. Goodbye, Julian."
A heavy, mechanical siren began to wail through the mansion.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
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Massive steel blast shutters slammed down over the floor-to-ceiling windows and the front doors. The grand hall was instantly plunged into dark, pulsing red emergency light.
They were trapped.
