Chapter 6 - The Ascent
The massive dogs hit Leo with the force of a speeding truck, knocking him violently to the ground.
His assault rifle clattered across the concrete as he screamed, desperately trying to protect his face.
Raphael didn't wait to watch the carnage; he grabbed Margot's hand and pulled her toward the open fire door.
"Recall the dogs!" Margot yelled, horrified by the brutal violence behind them.
"They know when to stop," Raphael answered coldly, dragging her into the emergency stairwell.
They sprinted up the concrete steps, the sound of Leo's frantic screams fading below them.
"You lied about the chemicals," Raphael stated as they reached the second-floor landing.
"I read the manifest for those boxes a month ago; they were full of old tax returns," Margot confessed, gasping for breath.
Raphael actually smiled, a genuine expression that transformed his harsh, dangerous features.
"You are surprisingly good at this, Margot," he commended her.
They reached the fourth floor, the level where Margot usually worked her temporary shifts.
The entire floor was completely deserted, the emergency lights casting a weak, eerie glow over the cubicles.
"We need to get to my private office on the top floor," Raphael explained, checking the hallway for threats.
"I have a secure satellite phone and a heavily armored panic room up there."
They moved cautiously through the maze of desks, ducking low to avoid being seen through the glass partitions.
As they passed Margot's small, cluttered desk, she noticed her computer monitor was glowing brightly.
She stopped abruptly, staring at the screen in absolute confusion.
"Someone is logged into my terminal," Margot whispered, pointing at the blinking cursor.
Raphael moved closer, his eyes narrowing as he read the code running across the screen.
"It's a massive data transfer," Raphael realized, his voice tightening with anger.
"They aren't just bombing the building; they are downloading the entire corporate mainframe to an external server."
Margot looked at the transfer bar, which was currently sitting at ninety-five percent.
"If they get that data, they get the identities of every undercover operative you have in the city," she realized.
Raphael raised his gun, prepared to shoot the computer tower to stop the transfer.
"Wait!" Margot yelled, grabbing his arm before he could fire.
"If you destroy the terminal, the failsafe protocol will automatically complete the upload to the cloud."
Raphael looked at her, realizing she knew the system better than his own IT department.
"Can you stop it?" he asked, trusting her completely in that moment.
Margot sat down at her desk, her fingers flying across the keyboard with frantic speed.
"I can reroute the destination IP to a dead server, but I need the master admin password," she said.
Raphael leaned over her shoulder and quickly typed a complex string of characters.
The transfer stopped instantly, replaced by a glaring red error message on the screen.
"You did it," Raphael breathed, looking down at her with intense admiration.
May you like
But before they could celebrate, the glass wall of the office shattered into a million pieces.
A team of heavily armed Romanov mercenaries stepped through the broken glass, aiming their weapons directly at them.
