The corridor outside the vault was silent. Not abandoned—holding its breath. As if the structure itself understood what had just been stolen from it.
Ava led the way, her system rerouting them through a maintenance shaft above the medical wing—one of the only pathways that wouldn't trigger Angel's personal surveillance net. The data core they'd taken pulsed in Lucas's hand, light flickering inside the sealed casing like it knew the damage it could do.
Lucas glanced back at the vault door as it began to slide shut behind them. "She's going to feel it like a blade between the ribs."
Locke didn't answer.
Ava kept walking.
They ducked into the shadows of the access shaft, boots moving in near-perfect silence. As they climbed, Ava's system fed her real-time updates—Angel's private comms were still silent. The virus Lucas had loaded into the core was already looping her internal signals into false reports.
They had thirty-eight minutes before the truth caught up to her.
