Chapter 41 Brie
Brie
The Tor browser had loaded perfectly, and Lark had stalked away to stare at the server.
The progress bar appeared, crawled to one percent, then stalled.
Error message: Connection timeout.
I tried again, with the same result. “Shit.”
Lark’s footsteps echoed as he marched back from the Orchid server. “What’s wrong?”
“The connection keeps dropping.” I opened a terminal window to check network diagnostics, flexing my fingers while I waited. “Let me trace the routing.”
“Enzo told me you’re the best.” He leaned over my shoulder, studying the screen. “Don’t let me down now.”
“Network troubleshooting isn’t an exact science.” I refreshed the connection and restarted the upload. Same result—one percent, then failure. Dammit, what was wrong? There was no way I was going to die because of a fucking network connection issue. “Could be minutes, could be longer.”
My hands trembled as I ran ping tests to external servers. All successful. Internal routing was normal. But something was blocking the upload.
“Is Claire with Fenix, too?” I asked, opening network configuration files.
“Don’t worry about Claire. Worry about fixing the shit in front of you.”
I scanned the routing tables and found upload restrictions on external connections. Specific ports blocked, certain domains blacklisted. “The upload restrictions aren’t standard security. Someone specifically configured this server to prevent uploads while still allowing access to the research.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know what it means.” I tried different connection methods and alternate ports. Nothing worked.
“It’s still showing one percent,” Lark said.
“Calculation wonkiness. The system thinks it’s uploading, but the data isn’t actually moving.”
Lark walked away, to the open door of rack fifteen. He knelt and pulled something from his tactical vest.
“If I can’t get the formula,” he said, barely loud enough for me to hear him over the hum of the server room, “no one gets it.”
He placed several items on the ground. Wire cutters. Wrapped rectangular packages. Wires.
Explosives.
A shiver ran through my entire body. Every server here was backed up—blowing the rack wouldn’t actually destroy the research—but I kept that thought to myself.
If he thought grabbing the backup was a better option, he’d force me to the storage area.
And when he discovered I didn’t know how to retrieve anything from the backups, I was dead.
At least here, I had a chance. “What’s your escape plan?”
Lark chuckled. “Don’t need one.”
That was even worse. If he was here on a suicide mission, he really wouldn’t care what happened to me. “The phoenix will rise?”
“Rebirth, regeneration—it’s all cycles. The universe is predictable in its patterns.
” He withdrew another package from his vest and placed it with the others.
“Although when Claire recalled our team from Warsaw—where I’d managed to exfil one of our hackers before they were caught—and sent us the video of three Reynolds Recoveries employees? Enzo hadn’t predicted that.”
From everything I knew of him, Enzo was actually an impulsive psychopath.
“We’d been trying to use outside hackers to get into this server for whatever Claire and Brooke didn’t destroy.
But suddenly, fate handed us the incomparable Brie Reynolds.
Already on the inside, of all things.” He shook his head and began unwrapping one of the items next to him.
“The same Brie Reynolds who’s supposed to be focused on fixing that computer, so I don’t have to blow both of us sky high. ”
My eyes snapped back to the KVM. “I’ll take a pass on that.”
But the moment his attention was entirely on his bomb-making, I switched terminals again.
Rack fifteen, server nine. The Meridian server responded instantly.
Relief flooded through me—the evidence about my father’s case showed “Upload Complete.” The proof Dad had been framed was safely transmitted to my secure cloud server.
Will had access to that server. As long as he made it out alive, someone would get the data.
But my Fenix intelligence upload crawled along at forty-two percent. Too slow. There was too much data.
I navigated to my virus directory and found the scorched-earth script.
Copying the files from their servers was one thing. But once I made changes—uploading my script or deleting the photos of Scarlett—they might have an anti-virus program that identified the changes. Someone might be alerted to my presence.
I let out a slow breath, staring at the screen. If Lark blew the Orchid server, the Meridian server would go with it. The virus would die before it could spread to Fenix’s broader network, and Scarlett’s photos would live forever.
It was now or never.
I deleted the photos and deployed the script.
It had to work, but we wouldn’t know for three days.
I switched back to the Orchid server. Same upload error. One percent. Failure.
“Any progress?” Lark called without looking up.
“Still troubleshooting.”
Back to Meridian. Forty-three percent uploaded. I pulled up another diagnostic tool, continuing the pretense while willing my real upload to move faster.
Lark stood and surveyed his handiwork. “How much longer?”
“Working on it. These network issues are persistent.”
He started walking back toward me, and my blood turned to ice.
Then I heard the unmistakable sound of wheels on the server room floor. A crash cart appeared at the end of our row, pushed by the most wonderful and reckless man in the world.
Will.
My heart stopped, then exploded into frantic beating. Relief and terror crashed together in my chest. He was here—my Will was here. But, oh god, he was walking straight into hell. Lark would kill him without blinking. I wanted to scream at him to run, to get away, to save himself.
But instead, he looked directly at me with those steady brown eyes that had anchored me through every storm.
“I can fix the upload problem,” he said.