THE LULLABY KEY : THE FALL
CHAPTER 18: The Brother’s Secret
The first hour was quiet.
Too quiet.
Lena sat in the basement, watching the progress bar crawl across the screen. 12%. 13%. 14%.
Zero monitored the security feeds. Nothing on the street. No black SUVs. No men in tactical gear. No one.
“They’re waiting,” Zero said. “They know we’re here. They’re just… waiting.”
“For what?”
“For us to make a mistake. To leave. To give up.” Zero zoomed in on a car parked across the street. “That’s not a civilian vehicle. The windows are too dark. The license plate is wrong.”
Lena leaned closer. “Can you trace the plate?”
“I can try.” Zero’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “It’s registered to a shell company in Delaware. Which is registered to another shell company in the Caymans. Which is—” She stopped. “I know this pattern. This is Aegis. Definitely.”
“How many inside the car?”
“Two in the front. Maybe more in the back. Hard to tell.”
Lena’s phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.
“You have one hour to surrender. After that, we burn the building. With you inside. —Pike.”
She showed Zero.
Zero’s face went pale. “They’re not playing games. They’re going to kill us.”
“Then we need to get out before they do.” Lena stood up. “How many exits?”
“Three. Front door. Back door. Fire escape on the second floor.”
“Marcus is at the front. I’ll take the back. Zero, you take the fire escape. We split up. Confuse them.”
“And the source code?”
Lena looked at the progress bar. 34%.
“We take the laptop with us. It’s almost half done. We can finish the download somewhere else.”
Zero shook her head. “The laptop doesn’t have enough memory. The source code is massive. We need the library’s server.”
“Then we defend the server.” Lena grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”
She ran upstairs.
Marcus was at the front door, peering through the blinds. “They’re moving. Three vehicles now. At least twelve men. Heavily armed.”
“How long?”
“Five minutes. Maybe less.”
Lena stood beside him. “We’re not going to make it, are we?”
“Probably not.” He took her hand. “But I’m glad I met you.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why not? It might be the last chance I get.”
The first vehicle pulled up to the library’s front entrance.
Men spilled out. Black tactical gear. Helmets. Rifles.
Pike was among them.
He walked to the front door and knocked.
“Lena! I know you’re in there! Come out peacefully, and no one gets hurt!”
Lena said nothing.
Pike sighed. “I was hoping you’d be reasonable. But you’re your father’s daughter. Stubborn to the end.”
He nodded to his men.
They raised their rifles.
And then—
A gunshot.
Not from Pike’s men. From somewhere else. Somewhere high.
One of the tactical men fell.
Pike spun around. “Who fired?”
Another gunshot. Another man down.
Pike’s men scattered, taking cover behind the vehicles.
Lena stared at Marcus. “Was that you?”
“No. My gun’s still holstered.”
Another gunshot. This time, Pike’s left arm jerked. He screamed.
And then a voice. A woman’s voice. Amplified by a megaphone.
“THIS IS THE MONTREAL POLICE. YOU ARE SURROUNDED. DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND LIE FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND.”
Pike looked up. At the rooftops. At the windows. At the police cruisers that had appeared from nowhere.
“Someone tipped them off,” he snarled. “Someone in my own team.”
He looked at the library’s front door—at Lena’s silhouette behind the blinds—and smiled.
“This isn’t over.”
He raised his good arm and fired a single shot at the library’s window.
The glass shattered.
But the bullet missed Lena by inches.
Then Pike ran. His men ran with him. They disappeared into the alleys, into the cars, into the night.
The police didn’t follow.
Lena opened the front door. A police officer approached her.
“Are you Lena Ashford?”
“Yes.”
“You’re under arrest. By order of the United States government. For treason.”
She didn’t resist.
As they put the handcuffs on her wrists, she looked back at the library.
Marcus was gone.
Zero was gone.
The laptop was gone.
But the source code was still downloading.
And somewhere in the darkness, Aris Thorne was watching.