I came home early to surprise my fiancée—and found our housekeeper tied to a marble column, sobbing as my fiancée held a lighter just inches from her face.

The blast wave threw me ten feet across the floor.

I landed hard on my side, clutching the titanium canister against my chest like an infant, the metal scorching against my jacket. The air was instantly filled with choking white smoke, pulverized salt dust, and the chemical stench of burning magnesium.

Through the blinding haze, I saw the floor beneath the vault door begin to buckle.

The ancient salt rock, weakened by decades of moisture seepage and now fractured by the thermite charges, gave way with a sound like tearing metal. A gaping, black chasm opened in the earth, swallowing the hydraulic equipment, the vault door, and two of Vance’s screaming mercenaries into the subterranean abyss below.

"David!" Marcus’s voice cut through the roaring collapse.

He appeared through the smoke, blood streaming down the side of his face from a shrapnel cut, but his rifle was still held steady at his hip. He grabbed the collar of my coat and hauled me to my feet.

"The hoist shaft is cracking!" Marcus yelled, coughing violently from the caustic smoke. "If the main pillar goes, the lake comes down on our heads!"

I turned back toward the chasm.

Arthur Vance was dragging himself along the edge of the widening pit, his legs tangled in the cables of the collapsed catwalk. His face was blackened with soot, his tailored coat torn to shreds. He saw me holding the glowing blue canister, and let out an agonized, animal howl.

"David! Don't leave me!" he cried, his polished aristocratic voice shattered into pathetic, wheezing begs. "I have the codes! Without me, that drive is just dead metal! Save me! I can give you everything! The world, David! The whole damn world!"

I stood ten feet away, staring down at the monster who had terrorized my life, who had invaded my home, who had treated human souls like pawns on an architectural blueprint.

"You already built your world, Vance," I said, my voice carrying over the rumble of falling rock. "Now sleep in it."

A massive section of the ceiling sheared off directly above the chasm.

Vance looked up, his eyes widening in pure horror as five tons of solid salt rock crashed down, obliterating the catwalk and dragging him down into the black water of the ancient brine river below.

There was no scream. Just a sudden, violent crack, followed by the sound of rushing, subterranean water.

"David, run!" Marcus roared.

We sprinted back down the haulage tunnel. The entire mine was screaming—a terrifying, low-frequency groan as the structural integrity of the vast salt cathedral began to fail. Behind us, support pillars were bursting under the shifting weight of the earth, exploding into powdery dust clouds that chased us down the dark corridor.

My lungs burned. My legs felt like lead. The forty-pound titanium canister grew heavier with every stride, but my fingers were locked around the steel handle with the grip of a dead man.

We reached the hoist cage.

The four guards who had been stationed at the surface level had fled, the hoist car left idling with its iron gate wide open.

Marcus shoved me inside, hit the emergency hoist override button, and slammed the heavy mesh gate shut.

The winch screamed in protest as the motor engaged at maximum speed. The cage jerked violently, throwing us against the steel bars, and then began to rocket upward through the vertical shaft.

Beneath us, the bottom of the world fell away.

Looking down through the iron grating of the elevator floor, I saw the lights of the mine flicker and die one by one, swallowed by a massive, rushing torrent of black water as the underground lake broke through the fractured ceiling, flooding the entire eighteen-hundred-foot cavern in a violent, swirling vortex.

Marcus leaned his back against the vibrating cage wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, breathing in deep, ragged gasps. He looked at me, then at the canister resting between my boots.

"Did we do it?" Marcus wheezed, wiping a mixture of blood and salt from his eyes. "Is it over?"

I looked at the blue LED screen on the canister.

The numbers were cycling rapidly, an internal countdown that had begun the moment the cylinder was disconnected from the vault cradle.

**REMAINING COOLDOWN BEFORE HARD-LOCK: 02:47:11.**

"No," I said, staring at the flashing red numerals. "We just triggered the transport timer. If this drive isn't docked into a primary terminal within three hours, the isotopic battery reverses its polarity."

"And what happens then?" Marcus asked grimly.

"It broadcasts the entire database onto the open internet," I said, looking up as the cold winter air began to rush down the hoist shaft. "Unencrypted. Raw. Every secret, every bribe, every dirty truth my father and Vance ever buried."