Chapter 3 - Blood on the Keyboard
By the time Julian reached Marcus’s loft in Wicker Park, it was too late.
The front door was slightly ajar. The lock hadn't been forced; it had been picked with professional precision. Julian pushed the door open, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Marcus?" he called out, his voice shaking.
The apartment was immaculate. Too immaculate. Marcus was a notoriously messy coder, his desk usually littered with energy drink cans and takeout boxes. Now, the desk was wiped clean.
And then Julian saw him.
Marcus was slumped in his ergonomic chair, a thick leather belt tightened viciously around his neck, the other end looped over a ceiling beam. His face was a horrific shade of purple. A spilled bottle of whiskey and a knocked-over chair completed the macabre tableau.
It was staged to look like a suicide. The tragic, sudden pressure of newly acquired wealth. The media would eat it up.
Julian clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle a sob. He had known Marcus since freshman year. They had built Aegis together on ramen and blind ambition.
A creak on the floorboards behind him snapped Julian back to reality. He spun around. A man in a tactical windbreaker was stepping out of the bathroom, holding a syringe. One of Vanguard's cleaners.
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Julian didn't think. He grabbed a heavy mechanical keyboard from the desk and swung it with all his might, catching the cleaner squarely in the jaw. Keys scattered like shrapnel. The man grunted and stumbled backward.
Julian bolted for the fire escape, hurling himself out the window into the frigid night air just as the sound of police sirens began to wail in the distance. Vanguard had called the cops to "discover" the body. Julian was officially a man on the run.
