Claire froze.
Her head snapped toward the vault entrance, her champagne-flushed cheeks suddenly losing their radiant color:
“Arthur… did you hear that? The security guards were supposed to be locked on the perimeter.”
I stepped through the blast doors into the white halogen glare of the vault.
I was still wearing my Carhartt work jacket, my faded jeans, and my steel-toed boots. In my right hand, hanging loosely at my side, was that four-inch antique solid-titanium surveyor’s compass transit key, stepped with fifty-six analog cryptographic notches:
`KEY IDENTIFIER: MERCER-ARTHUR-010`
`CLASSIFICATION: STRATEGIC SOVEREIGN ESCROW // TITLE 50 CONTINUITY`
`TITLE: CONDUIT TEN // THE CAPITAL COMMAND SPUR`
Beside me, stepping through the shadows with unhurried, predatory grace, his amber eyes reflecting the fluorescent lights, his massive golden head held high…
Was Barnaby.
An eighty-pound retired military working dog. A Belgian Malinois whose dark muzzle bore the jagged white scars of combat operations across sixty miles of subterranean bedrock.
Barnaby stepped three paces into the vault, stopped squarely between Claire and the exit, sat upon his haunches in textbook mechanical symmetry, and let out a soft, contented sigh as his heavy golden tail gave one single, definitive thump against the concrete:
*thump.*
Claire’s tablet slipped from her manicured fingers, shattering across the diamond-plate floor:
*CRASH.*
Her mouth worked soundlessly for three seconds, her breath hitching in dry, spastic micro-tremors:
*k-k-k.*
“D… Daniel…?!” Claire wheezed, stumbling backward against the steel filing racks:
“What… what are you doing here?! How did you get past the executive biometric gates?! You’re a field repairman! You work on broken water pipes!”
I looked past my wife of eight years directly into the eyes of Former Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance.
“You told your directors in Zurich forty-eight hours ago, Arthur,” Commander Daniel Arthur Mercer-Whitaker whispered softly:
My voice had no trembling husband’s hesitation left.
