Chapter 3 - The Sub-Basement Protocol
The server room beneath Carbone Strategic Holdings sat two levels below the parking garage—a cold, sterile cavern of polished concrete, humming black server racks, and glowing blue LED lights. The air smelled of ozone, recycled cool air, and dry copper.
Roman stood near the reinforced steel door, his coat off, his white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing heavy forearms covered in intricate, dark black tattoos—coiled serpents and old Latin phrases that Iris had never had the courage to translate.
Iris sat at the primary administrator's terminal, her left hand flying across the mechanical keyboard, while Roman carefully cleaned her hand wound with antiseptic wipes from the emergency medical kit Geno had provided.
"Ow," Iris hissed, flinching as the alcohol stung the open cut.
"Hold still," Roman murmured, his voice surprisingly gentle for a man whose knuckles bore the faint white scar tissue of countless past fights. "If I don't clean it properly, you'll end up with an infection by tonight."
"I'm trying to bypass Hal's administrative firewall," she said through gritted teeth, her eyes locked on the lines of green code scrolling rapidly down her screen. "He set up a remote trigger routed through an IP address in Zurich. The moment his terminal detects an unauthorized login from the executive suite, it starts a ten-second countdown to scrub the drive."
Roman applied a thick layer of sterile ointment, then began wrapping her palm with professional-grade medical gauze, securing it with medical tape. "How long do you need?"
"Three minutes," Iris said, pressing a string of commands with her uninjured left hand while using her right pinky to tap the enter key. "I'm rerouting his administrative permissions through a dummy portal in the shipping department. Once I lock his credentials, he won't even be able to log into his email."
Roman finished securing the bandage, his large hand gently wrapping around her wrist for a moment longer than necessary. "You're very good at this, Iris."
She paused, looking up from her monitors into his face. He was inches away, the scent of expensive cedarwood cologne and faint tobacco smoke drifting off his collar. "I like order, Roman. Numbers don't lie. People do."
"Including me?" he asked softly.
Iris looked at the scar on his jaw, then down at his inked forearms. "You've never lied to me. You just don't tell me everything."
A faint, rare smile touched the edge of Roman's lips, gone almost before she could register it. "In my line of work, telling people everything gets them hurt. I hired you four years ago because you saw things in the ledgers that three audit firms missed. I kept you on the thirty-eighth floor because you were clean. Uncorrupted by the dirt in this city."
"And now I'm sitting in a sub-basement with a slashed bag and blood on my sleeve," Iris said softly.
"Which is my fault," Roman replied, his voice dropping into a dark register. "I brought Hal Grayson into this company to handle the political connections downtown. I knew he was greedy, but I thought he was smart enough to know where my boundaries were. Selling access to the Vanev group crosses every line I have."
A sudden red warning light flashed at the top of Iris's primary screen, accompanied by a sharp, high-pitched electronic chime.
Iris swung back to the keyboard, her fingers racing. "He's doing it!"
"What's happening?" Roman asked, his posture instantly going rigid.
"Hal just tried to initiate a bulk-export of the Meridian transaction logs to an external cloud server," Iris reported frantically, reading the red text. "He knows something is wrong! He's trying to purge his workstation!"
"Geno," Roman said into his radio, his voice ice-cold. "Take his door down."
Over the radio, the muffled sound of a heavy wooden door splintering echoed through the speaker, followed by a sharp curse and the sound of furniture crashing to the floor.
"He's at his desk, boss!" Geno's voice came through the speaker, breathless. "He was reaching for a USB kill-switch on his keyboard tower!"
"Is he secured?" Roman demanded.
"Yeah. Frank has him pinned against the wall. The terminal is still running."
Iris slammed her left hand onto the spacebar. "I blocked the export! The Meridian ledger files are isolated on the local secure drive. Hal is officially locked out of the Carbone network."
She let out a long, ragged breath, leaning back against her leather chair, her body trembling with exhaustion. The line of code on her screen read: ACCESS DENIED - TERMINAL 001 ISOLATED.
Roman put his radio away, looking at the screen, then down at Iris. "Get your coat."
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Iris looked up. "Where are we going?"
"Up to thirty-seven," Roman said, pulling his jacket back on and buttoning it smoothly over his broad chest. "It's time to have a private conversation with our Chief Financial Officer."
