Sarah’s eyes widened. Her mind, trained to dissect syntax and phonetics, processed the sentence instantly. The old man. That was Kane. Victor Kane thought he was the master of puppets, but he had hired mercenaries who had been bought off by someone else. Likely a rival even bigger than Kane. Or perhaps they just planned to steal the billions for themselves. The upload bar hit sixty percent. “Last chance, Adrian,” Kane warned, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Wait,” Sarah shouted. She did not look at Adrian. She looked directly at the large mercenary behind Kane. “He doesn’t know, does he?” Sarah said, her voice piercing the air. Kane frowned, momentarily confused. “Doesn’t know what?” Sarah locked eyes with the mercenary. She spoke clearly, loudly, in perfect Serbian. He doesn’t know you are going to kill him as soon as you get the money.
The effect was instantaneous. The mercenary froze. His body language shifted from relaxed aggression to defensive tension. Kane stiffened. He did not speak Serbian, but he knew the tone of a threat when he heard one. He began to turn his head toward his men. “What did she say?” “She said,” Adrian said, catching on immediately, though he did not understand the words, “that your dogs are hungry, Victor.” “He is lying,” Kane shouted, but the seed of doubt had been planted. In the underworld, loyalty is only as deep as the next paycheck. Kane swung his pistol slightly to the right, toward his own men. “Is it true?” Kane snarled at the leader. “Who paid you? Was it the Russians?”
The mercenary leader did not answer. He raised his assault rifle. “Down,” Adrian screamed, tackling Sarah to the hard concrete floor. The room erupted. The mercenaries opened fire, not at Sarah and Adrian, but at Kane. Kane, a veteran of gang wars, was faster than they expected. He dove behind a rack of servers just as bullets sparked against the metal casing, sending showers of sparks raining down like fireworks. Kane fired back blindly. One of the mercenaries dropped. “The upload,” Sarah yelled, scrambling on the floor amid the deafening roar of gunfire. “Adrian, check the upload.” Adrian crawled toward the console. Bullets were chewing up the room, destroying millions of dollars of hardware. “It’s at eighty-five percent. The connection is unstable because they’re shooting the servers. Keep their heads down.”
Sarah grabbed the metal pipe she had dropped earlier. It was useless against guns, but she slammed it against the hollow metal floor, creating a loud, rhythmic banging that confused the shooters in the smoky haze. Kane popped up from behind his cover, his white suit stained with grease and blood. He was not looking at his hired men anymore. He was looking at Adrian. He realized that if the upload finished, his life was over, regardless of who won the gunfight. He raised his pistol, aiming at Adrian’s exposed back. “Adrian, move.” Sarah did not think. She did not calculate. She lunged. She threw herself between the gunman and the CEO. Bang. The sound was louder than the others. Sarah felt a sensation like a sledgehammer hitting her left shoulder. The force spun her around, and she collapsed onto the cold floor.