Doctors gave my six-year-old twins ten days to live, and for the first time, every dollar, weapon, and ounce of power attached to my name meant absolutely nothing.

We abandoned the armored Suburban in an alleyway beneath the elevated Green Line train tracks, three blocks from Vanguard's headquarters.

The rain had turned into a cold, biting sleet.

Elena wrapped Jonah and Blythe in heavy thermal survival blankets, cradling Jonah in her arms while I carried Blythe against my tactical vest. Both children were unconscious now, their breathing thin and shallow.

Franklin Yates stumbled ahead of us, his hands tied behind his back, a heavy black hood pulled over his head to hide his face from the streetlights.

"Over here," Elena said, pointing to a rusted iron maintenance hatch tucked behind a commercial dumpster.

I used a steel crowbar from the Suburban's trunk to wedge the hatch open. The smell of hot steam, damp concrete, and old iron rushed up from the dark hole below.

"Down," I ordered Yates, shoving him toward the iron ladder.

We descended twenty feet into the subterranean steam tunnels that snaked beneath the city street. The roar of the overhead trains rumbled through the brick arches above us, shaking dust from the ceiling.

Elena set Jonah down gently on a dry concrete ledge and immediately pulled out an IV saline bag from her kit to flush his line.

"How are they holding up?" I asked, kneeling beside Blythe. Her skin was translucent, blue veins visible beneath her temples.

"Her temperature is dropping," Elena said softly, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "We have maybe four hours before her core nervous system stops responding to the oxygen."

Four hours.

I turned to Franklin Yates, ripping the hood off his head. "Which way to the electrical room?"

Yates pointed down a dark, narrow corridor lined with massive high-voltage conduits. "Two hundred yards south. The steel door at the end opens into Vanguard's sub-level boiler room. But it’s locked with an electronic keypad."

I pulled out a small black device Marcus had given me—a high-frequency frequency-cloner. I slapped it against the keypad, pressing Yates’s thumb against the scanner.

The light flashed from red to green with a sharp electronic beep.

The heavy steel door unlatched.

Inside, the hum of massive cooling fans filled the air. Rows of high-voltage transformers and industrial server racks stretched into the gloom. This was the beating heart of Vanguard's digital network.

I pulled Marcus's physical bridge interface—a sleek, silver flash-drive device with a red LED—from my pocket.

"Where is the primary server trunk?" I asked Yates.

Yates gestured with his chin toward a tall, glass-enclosed cabinet in the center of the room. "There. The blue fiber-optic line."

I stepped up to the cabinet, raised the butt of my sidearm, and smashed the glass panel. I found the main fiber port, plugged Marcus’s bridge interface inside, and tapped my comms button.

"Marcus. You're in."

Five hundred miles away, Marcus’s fingers flew across his keyboards. "I've got the hand-shake signal, Lawson! Accessing the network root now... wait a minute."

"What's wrong?"

"Arthur didn't just lock down the building," Marcus warned over the earpiece. "He’s moving the entire sub-zero nitrogen storage unit right now. A medical transport helicopter just landed on Vanguard's roof helipad. They’re evacuating the enzyme!"