Chapter 57 - The London Siege
Rain fell over London in sheets of blinding grey mist as our black unmarked convoy navigated the winding streets of the financial district, slicing through the dawn traffic of Canary Wharf.
The city was waking up, oblivious to the fact that beneath its feet, the central circulatory system of global capital was ticking down toward cardiac arrest.
Julian sat across from me in the armored van, checking the breach charges and suppressed submachine guns. "Directorate covert teams have secured the perimeter of the Bank of England's secondary switching station beneath the Wharf. But Lillian's private security—former SAS contractors—have already locked down the subterranean levels."
"She knows we're here," I said, securing my tactical vest beneath a heavy black wool coat. "She wants us down there."
"It's a trap, Sovereign," von Halen warned over the encrypted earpiece from the command bird above the Thames. "Lillian has linked the Omega protocol to a localized thermite charge. If you fail to override the cipher with the master key within three minutes of breach, the entire subterranean archive will be incinerated."
"Then I won't fail," I answered.
The van screeched to a halt inside the underground loading dock of an unremarkable commercial office tower on Cabot Square. Before the engine had even died, Julian kicked the doors open.
Two Directorate operatives breached the security doors with hydraulic spreaders, tearing the steel frames apart with a sickening screech of tearing metal. We moved through the maintenance corridors in total silence, stepping over unconscious building guards who had been neutralized by our forward reconnaissance team.
At the end of a long, white-tiled corridor sat a massive airlock door of solid brushed titanium.
The digital keypad above the handle was flashing crimson. A timer was counting down in crisp white digits:
*04:12... 04:11... 04:10...*
"They've accelerated the protocol!" Julian shouted, moving forward with an electronic bypass kit. "Someone inside the vault is manually forcing the upload!"
"Step aside, Julian," I commanded.
I pulled the black iron key from my coat pocket and inserted it directly into a tiny, unpowered mechanical slot hidden beneath the digital keypad’s casing. I turned it three clicks to the left, then one hard turn to the right.
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A deep, resonant clunk echoed from within the walls. The titanium door unsealed with a hiss of pressurized nitrogen, sliding open into the cold, cavernous dark of the Omega Vault.
***
