Chapter 9 - The Safe Beneath the Mat
Sarah stepped forward, the heavy 9mm still trained on Viktor's chest. Her hands had stopped shaking. The sight of the man who had destroyed her life lying broken on the floor had burned away her fear, leaving only a hard, cold clarity.
"Where is the drive, Viktor?" Sarah demanded, her voice firm and steady. "The encrypted drive with the Task Force 7 field logs."
Viktor swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward the back corner of the beige training mat. "Under... under the third section. The keycode is 0814."
Emma walked calmly to the back corner of the room. She pulled back the heavy beige canvas mat, revealing a flush-mounted steel floor safe set directly into the concrete subfloor beneath the wood.
She entered the four-digit code: 0 - 8 - 1 - 4. The date of her father's murder.
A soft hydraulic click echoed through the room.
Emma pulled open the heavy steel door. Inside lay a black hard-shell case, three stacks of banded currency, and a silver encrypted USB drive bearing the seal of the Department of Defense.
She picked up the USB drive, holding it up to the light filtering through the high windows.
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"This is it, Mom," Emma said, turning to Sarah. "This clears Dad's name. It proves Blackwood was an illegal execution order."
Viktor groaned from the floor, his face pressed against the cool wood. "It doesn't matter..." he rasped, a faint, bitter smile touching his blood-stained lips. "You can't publish that... the moment that data goes live on a public server, Blackwood's operators will hunt you down... both of you... to the ends of the earth."
