Kiara listened.
Then she saw maintenance workers carrying equipment toward the emergency stairs.
And made the worst decision of her young life.
“I need the bathroom,” she told Fiona.
“Victor is coming.”
“Two minutes.”
Fiona hesitated, then nodded.
Kiara walked toward the restroom.
Then slipped through the stairwell door behind the maintenance team.
Her grandmother had always said sometimes the smallest person could enter where large people were seen too easily.
She followed the workers down to Level S3: restricted security laboratories. When they opened the access door, she slid through before it closed.
The basement corridor was white, cold, and sterile. Armored doors. Fluorescent lights. Cameras. A glass-walled server room at the end.
Inside stood Luca Carmen and Alan.
Kiara pressed herself near the wall.
Their voices were muffled but clear enough.
“Time is running out,” Luca said. “The transfer must finish today.”
“Aurora is incomplete,” Alan replied. “We need the rest of the code.”
“Solon has already paid.”
Kiara’s stomach dropped.
She had no phone. She had left it upstairs.
Then Pietro entered.
“We need to talk,” he said. “Alians knows there was a leak.”
Alan swore softly.
Luca turned sharply.
“How much?”
“Enough. We activate Delta Sequence. Create chaos. Crash the systems. Cover the extraction.”
Kiara nearly gasped.
Pietro was not a nervous innocent.
He was part of it.
When the three men left for another room, Kiara ran into the server room. A progress bar glowed on a screen.
Data transfer: 78%.
A storage device blinked green beside the terminal.
She did not understand the code.
She understood stealing.
She yanked the device free and shoved it into her sweatshirt pocket.
Voices returned.
She dove under a worktable just before Luca and Alan came back.
“The drive,” Luca said.
Silence.
“Where is the drive?”
They searched drawers, cabinets, equipment cases. Kiara curled smaller, barely breathing.
Then Alan said, “Someone was here.”
He left to check the hallway.
Luca stayed behind, typing furiously.
Pietro returned.
“Alan’s being detained by corporate security. The girl and the administrative assistant reported him after lunch.”
“The girl?” Luca hissed.
“The girl you ignored.”
Kiara’s throat tightened.
“And what about the witness?” Pietro asked.
“She’s secondary now,” Luca said. “Probably locked safely upstairs. Start Delta. Once the main systems collapse, nobody will care about one missing drive.”
When they left, Kiara crawled out from under the table, trembling.