Chapter 34 - The Subterranean Vaults of Vaduz
The drive across the Austrian border into Liechtenstein was a nightmare of backroads, snowdrifts, and heart-stopping encounters with border patrols. I had ditched my coat, stolen an unmarked utility van from the museum's delivery bay, and paid an off-grid mechanic outside Feldkirch five thousand euros in cash to bypass the GPS tracker.
By nightfall, the jagged limestone peaks of the Alps rose like black fangs against the bruised purple of the winter sky. High above the Rhine Valley, perched on a sheer promontory of rock, sat the Gutenberg Fortress—an ancient stone redoubt that had been in the private ownership of the von Bellerose family for over two centuries.
To the outside world, it was an uninhabited historical monument. But as I pulled the utility van into an abandoned forestry track half a mile below the eastern ramparts, my tablet picked up an invisible storm of electromagnetic radiation.
The fortress was alive with power. Massive industrial cooling units, buried deep within the mountain's granite belly, were venting superheated vapor into the freezing alpine air.
I checked the suppressed 9mm pistol Marcus’s contact had left for me in a drop-box near the border. Ten rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber.
I scaled the frozen drainage conduit on the southern face, my boots slipping on the black ice that coated the ancient stone. The scar on my neck throbbed with a persistent, rhythmic heat—an eerie physiological resonance that seemed to sharpen as I drew nearer to the fortress's subterranean levels.
The chemical Julianna had thrown at me wasn't just a key; it was an interface. My nervous system was actively responding to the localized high-frequency carrier wave being emitted by the servers beneath the rock.
I slipped through an auxiliary maintenance grate into the secondary ventilation shafts. The scent of ozone, lithium batteries, and cold granite filled the air.
Dropping silently onto the grated catwalk of Sub-Level 3, I found myself looking down into a breathtaking, subterranean cathedral of raw computing power.
Rows of monolithic black server stacks stretched into the darkness, cooled by rivers of liquid nitrogen that hissed through transparent conduits. In the center of the vast chamber stood a circular glass dais.
And strapped into an ergonomic chair at the center of the dais was a figure in a white containment jumpsuit.
I raised the weapon, descending the metal stairs with silent, deliberate steps.
"Step away from the console," I called out, my voice cutting through the hum of the cooling fans.
The chair slowly rotated.
The person sitting in the harness was not an operative, nor was it Vivienne.
May you like
It was Julianna.
Her face was gaunt, her eyes hollow and bloodshot, her wrists bound to the chair’s arms by biometric monitoring cuffs that were pulsing with glowing blue light.
