My Boss Fired Me in Front of Everyone - Nine Minutes Later, Someone Used My Name to Reroute $28 Million in Cargo

My sister was a monster. She had aimed a crossbow at my chest. She had happily run the Detroit loading docks for a syndicate that treated human beings like spare parts.

But she was still my blood. And the Consortium was going to strip her apart on an operating table because of a computer virus I wrote.

“Where did they take her?” I asked, staring blankly at the dark highway rolling past the windshield.

“The Citadel,” Julian replied. “A private, off-the-grid surgical facility hidden beneath a pharmaceutical research campus in the Laurentian Mountains. It’s a fortress. Armed mercenaries, biometric locks, and a private air traffic control tower.”

“How do you know all this, Julian?” I turned to face him, my grip tightening on the handle of my knife. “You’re a mercenary. Why are you risking your life to warn me? Why not just sell me out to them?”

Julian’s hands tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

He reached into his jacket with one hand, pulled out a small silver locket, and tossed it into my lap. I popped it open. Inside was a picture of a beautiful little girl, maybe six years old.

“That’s my daughter, Lily,” Julian whispered, his voice cracking with a pain so deep it shook the car. “She has acute lymphatic leukemia. Four years ago, Arthur Harrison promised me a donor match if I worked as his enforcer. I did terrible things for him. But when the match finally came through... the Consortium outbid me. They gave Lily’s new lungs to a Russian oil oligarch.”

Julian looked at me, and I finally saw the truth in his eyes. He wasn't fighting for money. He was fighting for revenge.

“Lily died three months ago,” Julian said. “I want to burn the Citadel to the ground. But I can't get past their digital security grid. Only the architect of their dispatch network can do that.”

“You need me to hack the fortress,” I realized.

“I need you to open the front door,” Julian corrected. “But we have a massive problem. The Citadel’s security isn't connected to the internet. It operates on a closed-loop intranet. You can't hack it from a laptop in a diner. You have to be physically plugged into their mainframe server.”

“Which is located where?”

“Level Sub-4,” Julian said grimly. “The heart of the surgical wing. To hack the network, you have to let them catch you, Emily. You have to strap yourself to their operating table.”

I looked down at the locket in my hand, then at the bloody message on the photograph.

“Get me inside,” I said.

The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.