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

“What do you mean he’s in the boardroom?” I demanded, pointing the pistol at the floor, my mind struggling to process the betrayal. “Julian told me his daughter died! He hates the Consortium!”

“His daughter did die,” Chloe sneered, wiping blood off her face. “But he didn't bring you here to avenge her. The Consortium offered him five million dollars and a new identity in Geneva if he delivered the architect of the locked server to them alive. He played your empathy like a violin, Emily.”

A sickening wave of nausea hit me. I had driven myself straight into the slaughterhouse because I felt sorry for the butcher.

“Plug in,” Chloe yelled, pointing to the mainframe terminal across the room. “Thorne’s biometric pulse just flatlined on the network monitors. The tactical teams know he’s down. We have less than sixty seconds before sixty armed mercenaries flood this floor!”

I ran to the terminal. I didn't need to cut my arm open. The RFID chip was near-field active. I slammed my bleeding wrist against the glass scanner pad.

The screen flashed green. ROOT ACCESS GRANTED.

I didn't just shut down the security doors. I brought up the facility's life support matrix.

“What are you doing?” Chloe asked, watching my fingers fly across the mechanical keyboard.

“Arthur taught me a lot about shipping logistics,” I muttered, pulling up the HVAC routing grid. “Every sealed transport container has a purge valve. The Citadel is built like a submarine. If there’s a biological leak, the system automatically seals the internal blast doors and vacuums the oxygen from the outer corridors to starve the fire.”

I typed in a master override command, overriding the fire suppression algorithms, and hit ENTER.

Klaxons began wailing throughout the facility. Red emergency lights began spinning.

Through the thick glass of the laboratory door, we watched as the heavy titanium blast doors in the outer hallways slammed shut, trapping the incoming tactical teams inside the sterile corridors.

The air pressure inside the hallway plummeted instantly.

“You just suffocated them,” Chloe whispered, looking at me with a twisted sense of pride. “You’re colder than Dad ever was.”

“I locked them in. The oxygen scrubbers will kick back on in ten minutes,” I said coldly. “I’m not a murderer, Chloe. I’m an operations manager. I just put them on hold.”

I unplugged the main fiber-optic cable from the console and plugged it directly into my tactical laptop.

“I have access to the escrow accounts again,” I said, watching the 85 million dollar balance reappear on my screen.

Before I could initiate the wire transfer, the intercom speaker on the ceiling crackled to life.

It was Julian.

“Emily,” Julian’s voice echoed through the lab, completely devoid of remorse. “You trapped the guards, but you’re still at the bottom of a silo. Transfer the money back to the Consortium ledger, and I’ll open the elevator for you.”

“And if I don't?” I asked the speaker.

“Then I press a button on this desk, and the neuro-toxin vents inside your laboratory open. You and your sister die in terrible pain.”

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