King of War Tech novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Night Shift

Monday night, 11:15, the thirty-first floor of the Merrick Dynamics tower.

I pushed a cleaning cart past rows of dark glass offices.

Stellan had moved me to the server floor that morning.

He called it a promotion to keep me out of the Admiral's sight.

He had no idea he'd handed me the best seat in the building.

The server room sat behind a key-card door at the end of the hall.

My badge didn't open it.

A spare badge I had lifted from a contractor's jacket on the first floor was hidden in my cart.

That one opened the door.

I emptied the bins, pushed the mop around the racks, and watched the monitor on the wall.

At 11:40 someone came up behind me.

I knew the sound of those metal heel taps.

"Evening, Tarrant."

The chief of security leaned in the doorway, huge and calm, with his hands in his pockets.

"Mr. Merrick wants to know why you're in a restricted room."

"They told me to clean it."

"They told you the hallway."

He walked up, and his hand closed over the back of my neck.

Not hard yet.

"I think you've been talking to the wrong people," he said. "I think you need a lesson about which people to talk to."

He steered me out into the stairwell.

The door shut behind us on its slow hinge.

Concrete walls, a bare bulb, nobody on thirty floors in either direction.

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