Chapter 8 - The Halon Trap
Director Vance collapsed to the floor, instantly dead before he even realized what had happened.
Chloe stepped over his bleeding body, gracefully waving her armed mercenaries forward to secure the room.
Nora and Roman remained perfectly still beneath the heavy server racks, watching the nightmare unfold.
Chloe walked over to the main terminal, her eyes tracing the glowing green progress bar of the data upload.
She laughed out loud, mocking Roman for thinking he could outsmart a professional assassin.
She typed a command into the keyboard, completely locking the terminal and halting the press leak.
Chloe loudly announced that she knew Roman and the waitress were hiding somewhere in the dark room.
She walked toward the heavy security doors, stepping out into the hallway with her surviving mercenaries.
She turned back to the server room and smiled, stating that she preferred not to ruin her dress by hunting them in the dark.
She pressed a heavy red button on the wall, sealing the server room doors with an impenetrable magnetic lock.
A loud, mechanical hissing sound immediately began echoing from the ceiling vents above them.
Roman recognized the sound instantly and dragged Nora out from beneath the server racks in pure panic.
He yelled that Chloe had just triggered the emergency halon gas fire suppression system.
The invisible gas would completely suck all the oxygen out of the sealed room in less than three minutes.
They rushed to the reinforced glass windows, but Roman knew they were designed to withstand hurricane-force winds.
Nora desperately scanned the ceiling and spotted a narrow maintenance hatch leading into the primary ventilation shafts.
Roman hoisted her up onto his shoulders, and she used her gun to fiercely smash the metal grate open.
She pulled herself into the dusty shaft and reached down to drag Roman up just as he began to choke on the thinning air.
They crawled furiously through the claustrophobic metal duct, completely ignoring the painful scrapes on their hands and knees.
They finally kicked out a grate and tumbled onto the freezing, wind-swept concrete of the skyscraper's rooftop helipad.
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They gasped for fresh air, relieved to be alive, until they heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter rotor spinning up.
Standing near the idling chopper was Elias, holding a terrifyingly sharp knife to the throat of Nora's teenage sister.
