Chapter 10
Marcus turned toward the stairs, his boots pounding against the concrete as he began hauling himself upward.
"Where are you going?" Elena called out, her voice shivering.
"To the corpse!" Marcus yelled back, his voice echoing down from the stairwell. "The physical keycard bypasses the cryptographic strike! It has to! That’s how commercial blast systems are built—mandatory analog override in case of power failure! I'm bringing that key down here!"
"Marcus, wait!" I shouted, moving after him.
My joints screamed with stiff, aching agony as I took the concrete stairs two at a time. The cold had penetrated deep into the marrow of my legs; each step felt like driving a rusted nail into my kneecaps.
I couldn't let Marcus destroy that key. If there was a physical override, it was our only chance to breach the bunker hatch without speaking my own name into that federal uplink. My nomination. My seat on the Second Circuit. The legacy of forty years in the state judiciary. If I could bypass the terminal, I could take the hard drives, take the satellite transceiver, and bury this mountain in the snow forever.
I reached the top of the stairs, gasping for breath, my lungs burning from the remnants of the diesel fumes.
The great room was a frozen tomb.
The emergency red LEDs flickered along the baseboards, casting long, grotesque shadows across the vast expanse of slate. The ambient temperature was below freezing now; every surface was coated in a delicate, sparkling crust of frost. The spilled Cabernet on the mahogany table had solidified into a dark, glassy scab of red ice.
And there, in the center of the room, sat Julian.
His body remained propped in the high-backed leather chair where Marcus had shoved him an hour earlier. His head was tilted slightly back, his jaw slack, his graying, waxen skin catching the bloody glare of the floor lamps. A thin trail of dried wine and dark bile clung to the corner of his mouth.
Marcus was already at the table.
He had his heavy hands on Julian’s lapels, shaking the dead man with brutal, furious jerks. "Where is it, you bastard? Where is it?"
"Marcus, step back," I ordered, catching my breath as I approached the far side of the dining table. "Let me do it. You'll tear the lining and jam the mechanism."
Marcus snarled, but his hands were shaking so violently from the cold that he could barely pinch his fingers together. He stepped back two paces, his chest heaving, his breath pluming in thick white clouds, his service weapon gripped loosely in his fist.
I stepped to the right side of Julian’s chair.
The smell of death was surprisingly absent. There was only the scent of frozen wool, stale wine, and the crisp, ozone bite of the sub-zero air leaking through the ventilation shafts.
Julian looked utterly, undeniably dead. His skin possessed that unmistakable, translucent yellowish-gray cast that I had seen on dozens of homicide victims in crime scene photographs. His eyes were half-open, glazed over with a cloudy, dull film, unfocused, staring into the dark timber beams of the high ceiling.
"Hurry up, Arthur!" Marcus hissed, his teeth clicking together. "The timer’s at twenty-eight minutes!"
I reached out my right hand.
My fingers were stiff, clumsy with numbness, but I managed to slip them past the lapel of Julian’s charcoal cashmere blazer. The fabric was cold—bitterly cold, like touching a frozen overcoat hung on an outside porch.
I slid my hand into the interior breast pocket.
My fingertips brushed against the slick, smooth surface of silk lining. Then, deep in the lower seam, my knuckles made contact with something hard, rectangular, and heavy.
Metal.
A heavy brass override plate, etched with mechanical grooves.
A surge of savage, triumphant adrenaline flooded my veins. It was there. The manual keycard. The physical bypass that would open the radial bolts without handing our lives to the Department of Justice.
I hooked two fingers over the edge of the brass card, preparing to wrench it free from the tailored pocket.
To gain leverage, I pressed the thumb of my right hand firmly against the side of Julian’s neck, bracing against his throat just beneath the jawline.
My thumb dug deep into the soft tissue of the carotid groove.
I expected the rigid, immovable resistance of advanced rigor mortis. I expected the frozen, clay-like deadness of flesh that had ceased cellular function an hour and a half ago.
Instead, beneath the clammy, ice-cold skin, something moved.
A faint, rhythmic vibration.
*Thump.*
I froze. Every muscle in my body turned to stone.
*Thump.*
It wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't the echo of my own racing pulse pounding in my ears.
It was beneath my thumb. Deep within the carotid artery, a steady, mechanical, sixty-beats-per-minute cadence was pumping with absolute, rhythmic regularity.
My breath stopped in my throat. I looked down into Julian’s dead, waxy face.
Beneath the cloudy film of his half-open left eye, the lower lid suddenly twitched.
