Chapter 8 - Developing in the Dark
The second-floor mezzanine was empty, reserved for private banquet functions that had not yet begun.
Lily sprinted across the carpeted lounge, her camera swinging hard against her hip, her eyes locked on the gray industrial door marked: *ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION // HIGH VOLTAGE.*
Behind her, she heard the heavy thud of running footsteps.
The security contractor from the lobby had finally realized that an accredited photojournalist shouldn't be sprinting toward the high-voltage maintenance room.
“Hey! Stop right there!” the contractor roared in English, his boots slamming against the marble floor of the mezzanine.
Lily didn’t stop. She reached the door, grabbed the fire axe mounted inside the emergency glass case on the wall, and smashed the heavy steel latch with the flat of the axe head.
*BANG!*
The lock gave way. Lily kicked the door open and lunged inside the narrow, concrete electrical vault.
The air inside the vault hummed with raw, terrifying power. Giant transformers lined the walls, their cooling fans whining in an endless chorus. In the center sat the main circuit breaker bank for the tower’s low-voltage illumination grid.
Lily didn’t have time to find the correct switch.
She swung the heavy steel axe with all the force of her shoulders, burying the blade directly into the secondary trunk line of the emergency lighting relays.
*KABOOM!*
A blinding arc of electric-blue sparks erupted from the severed cables with a deafening crack that shook the room. The smell of scorched ozone and vaporized copper filled the air.
Instantly, the entire Grand Elysée Tower plunged into pitch-black darkness.
The soaring crystal chandelier in the atrium died. The wall sconces died. The perimeter security lights died. The only illumination remaining was the eerie, pulsing green glow of battery-operated emergency exit signs.
Down in the lobby, screams erupted as hundreds of people were plunged into sudden, disorienting blackness.
On the eighth-floor terrace, sixty feet above, Damian heard the electrical explosion echo through the glass.
*“Now!”* Damian roared to himself.
He slapped a circular thermite breach charge against the center pane of the terrace sliding glass doors, twisted the detonator cap, and stepped back.
A blinding, hissing ring of white-hot fire burned through the laminated glass in two seconds flat.
Damian brought his combat boot up with crushing force.
*CRASH!*
The entire eight-foot glass panel shattered into millions of blunt diamonds, cascading across the hardwood floor of the executive boardroom.
Damian breached through the curtain of falling glass like a phantom born of smoke and violence.
Inside the darkened boardroom, total chaos reigned.
The Board of Directors were screaming, diving beneath the mahogany table as the bitter morning wind howled through the shattered terrace.
“Kill him!” Marcus Voss screamed, staggering backward, his gold pen clattering to the floor.
Julian Vance drew his weapon with terrifying speed—a customized .45 caliber combat pistol. But in the pitch-black room, with the wind howling and the glass swirling, his night vision was destroyed. He swung the muzzle toward the terrace door, firing blindly.
*Crack! Crack!*
The heavy rounds tore through the mahogany paneling of the wall behind Damian.
Damian didn’t fire his weapon. He didn’t need to. He knew the geometry of the room because Lily had mapped it into his retina five minutes ago.
Damian lunged low, sweeping the legs out from under the second shooter on the left flank before the man could raise his MP9. A single, brutal palm strike to the man’s throat neutralized him instantly.
Damian rolled across the glass-strewn floor, coming to his feet behind the heavy leather chair at the head of the table.
Julian spun, bringing his weapon up to align with Damian’s head.
“You’re too late, Damian!” Julian snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Voss already owns the ports!”
“He doesn't own the negative space, Julian,” a calm, female voice echoed from the hallway doors.
Julian froze for a fraction of a second, his instincts torn by the sudden threat behind him.
Standing in the shattered doorway of the boardroom, framed by the faint green light of the hallway emergency exit, was Lily Carr.
She had run up six flights of maintenance stairs in the dark, her chest heaving, her knuckles bleeding. But her hands were as steady as iron.
She had the heavy external flash unit mounted to her camera, raised at eye level.
“Smile, Julian,” Lily whispered.
*CRACK!*
Eight hundred lumens of blinding, point-blank white light exploded across the boardroom.
Julian screamed in agony, his retinas instantly scorched by the flash, his vision wiped clean into a wall of pure blinding white.
He fired blindly into the ceiling, the bullet punching a hole through the plaster.
Damian stepped out of the shadows.
A single, muffled *thwip* from Damian’s suppressed SIG Sauer ended the struggle.
Julian Vance collapsed onto the glass-covered floor, motionless.
Silence descended upon the boardroom, broken only by the howling wind blowing through the shattered terrace and the terrified, ragged sobs of the Board of Directors cowering beneath the table.
Marcus Voss stood pinned against the mahogany credenza, his face gray with horror, his tailored suit spattered with glass dust.
May you like
Damian walked toward him, the smoking barrel of his weapon lowered, his dark eyes burning with absolute, uncontested dominance.
***
