The anonymous figure pushed off the lockers, his boots practically flying down the remaining stretch of the corridor until he slid to a halt in front of the primary server room. He swiped his clearance card, the heavy pneumatic door sucking inward with a hiss, and stepped inside the chilled, dark vault humming with rows of towering mainframe racks. Moving with frantic, sweat-soaked precision, he docked his encrypted tablet into the master diagnostic port, slamming his fingers across the physical keyboard to initiate an emergency data scrub. A cascading wall of crimson text began wiping system cache logs, local access points, and secondary routing files. The progress bar crept upward at an agonizingly slow pace: 12%... 24%... 41%... Out in the corridor, Sergeant Miller was trudging past the auxiliary server banks, running on pure caffeine, lingering adrenaline, and a bad gut feeling. The facility was locked down tight, but something about the frantic, erratic shift changes had his instincts screaming. "Screw it," Miller muttered to himself, unholstering his sidearm and checking the chamber with a quiet, practiced click. "What the hell. I'ma just check some random doors." He rounded the corner, his eyes locking onto the primary server room. The heavy steel door was slightly ajar—a direct, unforgivable violation of standard security protocol during a red-level facility lockdown. Miller raised his weapon, stepping across the threshold with his tactical light cutting through the dim, blue-lit server rows. "Hey! What the fuck are you doing in here?!" Miller barked, sweeping his beam down the aisle. The figure whipped around from the master terminal, eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated panic as the screen hit 78%. Miller squinted, his weapon locked dead on the intruder's chest as his brain finally started connecting the dots between the missing access logs, the ghost hole, and the terrified face in front of him. "Wait a minute... I know that vest," Miller shouted, his voice echoing off the server stacks as he took a hard, aggressive step forward. "Drop the drive! Drop it right now or I will—" Before Miller could finish the warning, the figure lunged off the terminal with feral desperation. A heavy steel wrench grabbed from a maintenance tray came down in a brutal, blinding arc, smashing square into Miller's tactical helmet with a sickening crunch of reinforced plastic and bone. Miller staggered back, his vision instantly swimming with white-hot static, but sheer military discipline kept his finger anchored to his shoulder mic. "Control, this is Sergeant Miller, I've got a—" Miller choked out, coughing up a spray of warm blood as he tried to raise his sidearm. "Sector four server vault... we've got an active insider threat—" Down in Billy's sub-level office, the secure comms speaker suddenly blasted a sharp wave of static over the desk. “Control, this is Sergeant Miller, I've got a... Sector four server vault... we've got an active insider threat—” The transmission didn't just end—it cut out mid-sentence with a brutal, muffled grunt, followed by the wet, heavy thud of dead weight slamming hard against the concrete floor. Then, absolute, chilling silence.

Cold sweat