Chapter 6 - The Biometric Lock
The distant sound of heavy drilling echoed up through the shaft of the private elevator—Vance’s men were cutting through the reinforced steel doors on the floor below. Time had officially run out.
“Hold him still,” Lorenzo instructed, pulling a sleek, pocket-sized tactical decoder from his jacket pocket and snapping a fiber-optic cable into a hidden data port beneath the steel buckle of Ghost’s collar.
Nina wrapped both arms around the Rottweiler’s massive chest, pressing her face against his warm, thick fur. “It’s okay, buddy. Good boy. Stay still.”
Ghost let out a soft, submissive whine, leaning his full weight against her as Lorenzo’s fingers flew across the tiny keypad of the decoder.
“The system is locked behind a triple-redundancy firewall,” Lorenzo muttered, sweat beading along his hairline. “It requires a secondary authentication pulse—heart rate synchronization and vocal resonance matching.”
“Vocal resonance?” Nina repeated over the rising whine of the drill downstairs.
“Sing,” Lorenzo ordered without looking up.
“What? Sing what?”
“That song. The six notes you hummed when you walked into the penthouse.”
Nina stared at him, her mind blanking under the crushing weight of the terror surrounding them.
“Now, Nina!” Lorenzo barked as the decoder screen flashed a warning red. AUTHENTICATION FAILED. SYSTEM FORMAT IN 30 SECONDS.
Panic surged through her veins. She closed her eyes, burying her face into Ghost’s ear, and began to hum.
It was the same simple, descending melody her grandmother had taught her—the lullaby she had sung to a three-week-old puppy shivering in a cardboard box on her kitchen floor.
*Da-da-dum, down, down, down...*
Ghost’s ears perked forward instantly. He let out a soft, high-pitched vocalization, pressing his throat directly against Nina’s wrist where her pulse raced at a frantic tempo.
On the handheld decoder screen, the flashing red warning suddenly shifted to a brilliant, steady green.
*BIOMETRIC MATCH CONFIRMED. DECRYPTING SECURE ARCHIVE...*
Progress bars flooded the tiny screen. 10%, 45%, 80%, 100%.
*DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.*
A small internal flash-drive slot popped open on the side of the collar, ejecting a tiny, gold-plated micro-SD card into Lorenzo’s waiting palm.
May you like
“Got it,” Lorenzo breathed, pocketing the card just as the heavy double doors of the study blew inward with a concussive blast of white smoke and flying shrapnel.
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