Chapter 8 - Nolan's Favorite Kind of Cage.
Ava looked toward the ceiling speaker while James tested the sealed steel door.
"Open it."
Nolan laughed softly through the intercom.
"You really think you still get to give orders?"
James did not raise his voice.
"I am giving you one chance to open this door before the police arrive."
"The police won't find this room."
Elena kept her eyes on the transfer screen.
Sixty-three percent.
"He is trying to stall us until the purge finishes."
Nolan heard her.
"Still clever, Elena."
Ava stepped closer to the speaker.
"You visited her when you were sixteen."
Silence followed.
"What did you say to her?"
Nolan's answer came with the same casual cruelty he had used upstairs.
"I asked why my father was afraid of her."
Elena's hands stopped moving over the keyboard.
"And what did I tell you?"
"That he should be."
Nolan laughed again.
"I thought you were crazy."
Elena looked at Ava.
"He came back four more times."
Ava closed her eyes.
The man who claimed he had never met her mother had spent years visiting her secret prison.
Nolan continued speaking.
"My father wanted to know whether she had told anyone about the patents."
James looked up at the speaker.
"And you volunteered to help?"
"I was protecting my family."
Ava opened her eyes.
"That is what you call everything you do."
The transfer reached eighty-two percent.
Then the monitor flashed red.
PURGE SEQUENCE: 00:52.
Elena swore under her breath.
"The magnetic system is charging."
James scanned the room.
"Can we stop it?"
"Not from here."
Ava looked at the ventilation grate near the floor.
It was large enough for the servers to breathe but too narrow for a person.
Beside it ran a bundle of emergency power cables.
Ava remembered something Nolan once complained about during a renovation.
The archive magnets were connected to a separate battery bank because Victor did not trust the generator.
The battery bank was under the wine room floor.
"If we cut the battery feed, does the purge stop?"
Elena looked at the cables.
"Yes, but those lines are behind the wall."
James lifted a heavy steel chair from the workstation.
"Then we make a door."
He struck the drywall beside the cable conduit.
The first blow cracked plaster.
The second opened a hole.
Nolan heard it through the microphone.
"Stop!"
James struck again.
Ava almost smiled.
Nolan had spent months frightening her with slammed doors and sudden violence.
Now the sound belonged to someone dismantling his control instead of enforcing it.
Elena reached through the opening and located the emergency cutoff.
The countdown reached eleven seconds.
She pulled.
The room went dark.
For one terrible beat, everything was silent.
Then the emergency lights returned.
The purge monitor was dead.
The storage drive blinked green.
TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Elena removed it and placed it inside her coat.
Nolan screamed through the speaker.
"You have no idea what you've done!"
Ava stepped close enough that her lips were inches from the microphone.
"I finally do."
A metallic sound came from the door.
The lock released.
James moved in front of Ava as it opened.
Nobody stood outside.
Only Nolan's phone lay on the stone floor, its screen still connected to the archive controls.
Ava picked it up.
A message had just arrived from a contact saved as JUDGE H.
May you like
It contained six words.
GET HER OUT BEFORE POLICE ARRIVE.
