Chapter 22 - THE ARCHITECT'S ADVANTAGEInside the studio, the mercenaries kicked open the doors to the main exhibition hall. The leader raised his weapon, sweeping the room. "Check the offices! Find the old man!"
Suddenly, the massive automated steel shutters on all the exterior windows slammed down simultaneously, plunging the entire studio into pitch blackness.
"What the hell?" one of the mercenaries shouted, reaching for the tactical flashlight mounted on his rifle.
Before he could turn it on, the building’s visual fire-alarm system activated. But it wasn't the standard flashing strobe. Caleb had hacked the strobe frequency. Blinding, high-intensity LED lights began pulsing in a rapid, chaotic, disorienting pattern. It was a visual assault designed to induce vertigo and temporary blindness in anyone unprepared for it.
In the back drafting room, Daniel saw the specific strobe pattern bleeding under the door. He instantly recognized the rhythm. It wasn't random. It was visual Morse code.
S - A - F - E - R - O - O - M - N - O - W.
Daniel didn't hesitate. He guided his terrified students toward the material testing chamber—a soundproof, reinforced concrete room Caleb used for acoustic experiments. Daniel locked the heavy steel door from the inside, plunging them into safety.
Outside, Caleb watched the building's schematics on the tablet. He turned to his father and signed: "Daniel is secure in the vault. The mercenaries are blinded in the main hall. Go."
Dominic didn't need to be told twice. He signaled his men. "Non-lethal if possible, but break whatever you have to. Nobody touches my son's studio."
Dominic’s enforcers breached the back loading dock. The mercenaries, completely disoriented by the strobe lights and the shifting acoustic baffles that Caleb was actively moving via the smart-building system, were sitting ducks.
The ensuing fight was brief, brutal, and utterly one-sided. Dominic moved through the strobe-lit darkness with terrifying precision, disarming a mercenary and driving his knee into the man's ribs with a sickening crunch.
"Victor Raines sent you," Dominic growled, hauling the gasping mercenary off the floor by his tactical vest. "Tell me exactly what he told you to burn."
"The... the servers," the mercenary choked out, spitting blood. "He said the architect had a backup of the orphanage ledgers on his local servers."
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Dominic dropped the man in disgust as his guards secured the rest of the intruders with zip-ties. He looked up at the security camera in the corner of the room and nodded.
A moment later, the strobe lights ceased, and the emergency overhead lights flickered on. The studio was secure.
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