Story code: ST-000606
Part 2: Severed Lines
The heavy brass handle of the archive door turned, but the latch caught. Martha had frantically kicked a rusted metal step-stool against the base of the doorframe just seconds before. The heavy oak door bowed inward, hitting the stool with a loud, metallic clack.
“Hey! Open this door,” a muffled, authoritative voice barked from the hallway.
Martha whipped her head back to the monitor. *Three minutes, forty seconds remaining.* The blue progress bar was agonizingly slow, crawling pixel by pixel across the blindingly bright screen. If she turned off the tower to hide the noise, the upload would die instantly. She jammed her finger against the monitor’s power button instead. The screen went black. The room plunged back into the dim, dust-moted shadows of the basement, save for a harsh sliver of fluorescent light cutting through the gap in the doorway.
The ancient computer tower continued to whine loudly, its cooling fan rattling like a dying lawnmower. There was no hiding the sound.
A heavy shoulder slammed into the frosted glass of the door. The step-stool screeched against the linoleum floor, giving way. A suited arm wedged through the widening gap, reaching blindly for the light switch.
Martha backed away from the desk, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She grabbed a random, dust-covered binder from the nearest shelf and clutched it to her chest.
The fixer shoved his way into the room. It was a different man than the one who had unplugged her workstation. This one was broader, with a clipped earpiece and a heavy tactical flashlight hanging from his belt. He dusted off the sleeve of his charcoal jacket and glared at her.
“You were told to vacate the premises,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of any real irritation. To him, she was just a logistical problem.
Martha forced her voice to stay steady, though her hands were shaking violently against the cardboard binder. “I was getting my research notes. This is a personal archive. You can’t legally confiscate my previous, published work.”
The fixer scanned the claustrophobic room, unimpressed. His gaze swept over the towering stacks of yellowing newspapers and the rows of microfilm cabinets. Then, he tilted his head. He was listening to the grinding, mechanical roar of the beige tower in the corner.
“Everything stays,” he said. “Out of the room. Now.”
*Three minutes.* That was her guess. She needed to buy three minutes.
“I have what I need,” Martha said, taking a deliberate step to her right to block his line of sight to the desk. “I’m leaving.”
She moved toward the door, hoping he would simply step aside and follow her out. Instead, the fixer stood his ground. He reached to his belt and unclipped his flashlight. He clicked it on, shining the beam directly past her. The harsh LED light illuminated the spinning dust particles in the air, tracking straight to the beige tower. He noticed the thick black power cord trailing to a dedicated, unswitched wall outlet-one of the few circuits the liquidators hadn’t managed to kill from the breaker box.
“Step aside,” the fixer commanded, his tone dropping an octave.
“Do not touch me,” Martha snapped, raising the heavy binder between them like a flimsy shield. “I am walking out.”
He didn’t bother arguing. He simply stepped around her, his broad shoulders brushing past her with enough force to knock her off balance. He headed straight for the desk. He saw the blank monitor, but the hard drive was clicking furiously. He knew exactly what a machine operating under a heavy load sounded like.
He reached for the monitor’s power button.
Martha dropped the binder. It hit the floor with a loud slap. She lunged forward and grabbed his wrist with both hands. “You don’t have the legal right to touch this terminal!”
The fixer sighed. With a casual, almost lazy motion, he twisted his arm and shoved her back by the shoulder. Martha stumbled backward, her spine slamming hard into the edge of a steel shelving unit. Pain flares intensely between her shoulder blades, knocking the wind out of her lungs. She gasped, sliding down slightly, helplessly watching as he pressed the button.
The blinding white glare of the screen illuminated the dark room.
The progress bar sat squarely in the center of the display. *Uploading… 78%. Estimated time remaining: 1 minute, 15 seconds.*
The fixer leaned in, his eyes darting to the file name. *Vance_Cayman_Ledgers_Decrypted.zip.*
His bored, professional demeanor vanished instantly. His jaw tightened. He didn’t reach for the keyboard. He looked directly at the thick black copper wire connecting the back of the machine to the wall jack.
*Upload: 82%. 1 minute.*
Martha scrambled to her feet, grabbing a heavy, bound volume of 1984 broadsheets from the bottom shelf. She swung it wildly at his legs. The massive book caught him behind the knee. He grunted, buckling slightly, his hand missing the copper cord and slapping against the drywall.
He recovered with terrifying speed, turning on her with genuine, focused anger. He kicked the heavy book away and stepped squarely in front of the machine, physically blocking Martha from getting anywhere near it.
*Upload: 89%. 45 seconds.*
The fixer didn’t go for the wall cable this time. He looked down and saw the black USB drive protruding from the front of the tower. The little red LED on the drive was blinking furiously as the machine read the data.
He reached down and pinched the USB drive between his thick thumb and forefinger.
“No!” Martha screamed, lunging forward, clawing at his suit jacket.
He ignored her completely. With a sharp, decisive tug, he pulled the USB drive out of the port.
The computer screen immediately threw a fatal error box. *Source File Lost. Upload Aborted.*
The progress bar turned a dead, ashen gray at ninety-four percent.
Martha froze, staring at the screen in absolute horror. The offshore ledgers. The unredacted accounts, the shell company routing numbers, the definitive proof of Vance’s illegal acquisition. All of it, halted dead in the copper wire.
The fixer held up the black USB drive, inspecting it in the harsh glow of the monitor. He slipped it into his inner breast pocket, completely securing the only local copy of the evidence. Then, he tapped his earpiece.
“Control, this is Team Four. I’m in the basement archive. An employee attempted a data exfiltration. I have the physical drive, but she initiated a partial network upload over a bypassed legacy line. You need to sever the main trunk to the street. Now.”
A tinny voice responded from the earpiece. Martha could barely hear it over the rushing blood in her ears, but she caught the fatal words: *”…trunk is cut. Secure the employee in the room. We’re sending the police liaison down to make an arrest for corporate espionage.”*
The fixer turned back to Martha. His eyes were cold, assessing her not as an annoyance, but as a detained criminal. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a set of heavy, industrial plastic zip-ties.
“Sit down in the chair,” he instructed, gesturing to a single wooden stool in the corner.
Martha looked at the doorway. He was blocking the only exit. He was twice her size, he had the evidence in his breast pocket, and the police were en route to bury her under fabricated charges. Her eyes drifted past his shoulder, landing on the heavy, red steel cylinder of a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall behind him.