31. Caleb
CALEB
Walter Graves raises his pistol.
Not at me.
At Evie.
I move before he fires.
My shoulder strikes her chest, knocking us both behind the wooden desk.
The shot cracks above us.
A leather ledger bursts apart on the shelf behind Evie. Yellowed pages spiral through the smoke.
She hits the floor beneath me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
I search her face.
Her throat.
The front of her vest.
No blood.
“Caleb, I’m fine.”
Walter fires again.
The bullet punches through the desk inches from my hand.
I roll away from Evie and return fire.
Walter vanishes behind a row of shelves.
“Graves, east aisle!” I shout.
Rook moves to intercept him.
The Inner Guard surges into the archive behind Walter.
Not charging.
Advancing.
One squad fires while another moves between the towering shelves. A third team circles toward Fathom and the evidence case.
They know the room.
Every aisle.
Every exit.
Every angle.
“They’re clearing it like a city block,” Shark says.
“They trained here,” Rook answers. “They know the floor plan.”
Cobra looks at the steel shelves.
“Then we change it.”
His expression tells me he already has a plan.
That worries me.
“What are you thinking?”
“The shelves are bolted together.”
“And filled with the evidence we came to preserve.”
“I don’t need to destroy the shelves. I need to move them.”
He pulls a compact line launcher from his pack and fires the magnetic anchor into the top of an empty rack near the eastern aisle.
The cable snaps taut.
Cobra braces his boots against the floor and activates the winch.
Steel groans.
The shelf tips sideways and crashes across the aisle.
Two guards dive clear.
A third becomes trapped behind the fallen frame.
Cobra fires a second line.
Another rack falls, cutting off the Inner Guard’s advance without burying the archive beneath twisted metal.
Falcon coughs through the dust.
“I officially enjoy working with Cobra.”
“You say that now.”
The team moves.
Shark covers Fathom while he secures the evidence case.
Rook pursues Walter through the eastern aisle.
Mac remains behind a concrete pillar, firing only when a guard threatens one of us.
Evie stays beside me.
Exactly where I need her.
Exactly where Walter expects her to be.
A shadow moves beyond the next shelf.
I pull Evie against me.
Walter’s pistol fires.
The bullet strikes the metal edge near her head.
I fire back.
My round tears through Walter’s jacket as he turns.
He staggers.
Not hit.
Close.
His gaze meets mine through the drifting paper.
The composure is gone.
His face is twisted with hatred.
“You should have stayed dead on that mountain.”
“You first.”
He runs.
I follow him into the final aisle.
His hand presses against a panel disguised as part of the wall.
A door opens.
Walter slips through.
The panel starts closing behind him.
I lunge, but a guard enters from the left.
He swings his rifle toward Evie.
I fire once.
The weapon drops from his hands.
By the time I reach the panel, the hidden door is sealed.
“Fathom!”
“Working on it.”
The fight behind us begins to fade.
The Inner Guard withdraws as quickly as it entered.
Not defeated.
Repositioning.
Rook reaches us. “Where did Graves go?”
“Through the wall.”
Fathom runs a scanner over the panel.
“There’s a large empty space behind this section.”
Mac stares at the wall.
“No.”
Cobra wipes dust from the metal.
Three concentric circles appear beneath his hand.
The same symbol stamped on the Second Circle ledger.
Evie steps closer. “What is it?”
Mac’s voice barely carries.
“I think you found the Chairman’s vault.”
A faint vibration moves beneath our feet.
Then three heavy locks begin disengaging on the other side.
The vault isn’t sealed.
Someone is opening it for us.