The silence inside the office pod was different from the silence of the warehouse. Outside, the world was a cacophony of shrieking metal and static, but inside this small, glass walled box, the air was still and smelled of expensive cologne and ozone.
Miller didn't look like a villain. He looked like the man who had sat across from Sam at annual Christmas parties, asking about Sarah's gardening and Leo's baseball stats. That was the deepest cut the realization that while Sam had been working late to protect the company, Miller had been planning to sell Sam's life for a higher profit margin.
"Why, Miller?" Sam's voice was a low rasp, thick with the chemical dust of the warehouse. "You have everything. You're the face of the industry."
"I'm the face of a service provider, Sam. I'm a glorified babysitter for other people's data," Miller replied, the silver revolver steady in his manicured hand. "The God Key isn't just code. It's the ultimate leverage. In an hour, I won't just be a CEO. I'll be the man who can turn off the lights in any city on the planet. I'll be the one they negotiate with."
Sam looked at the secondary monitor, hidden by the glare of the desk lamp. The Logic Bomb his Trojan Horse that was at 82%. He needed ninety seconds. He needed to keep the "babysitter" talking.
"You're not a coder, Miller. You're a salesman," Sam taunted, leaning back slightly to shield the screen with his shoulder. "You don't even know what you're holding. The moment you try to use that key without my final handshake, the architecture collapses. It'll trigger a hard wipe. You'll have a billion dollars worth of digital garbage."
It was a bluff. A desperate, thin ice lie. Miller's eyes narrowed, the gears of corporate greed turning behind them. He knew Sam was the architect, he knew the system had layers he didn't understand. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, the barrel of the gun dipping just an inch.
That was the window.
Sam didn't go for the gun. He went for the environment. He slammed his elbow into the office pod's emergency fire suppression pull cord, a manual override he knew was hardwired and couldn't be jammed.
A high velocity blast of white chemical powder exploded from the ceiling vents. The small room was instantly transformed into a blinding blizzard of sodium bicarbonate.
Miller coughed, a panicked, wet sound, and fired a shot. The bullet screamed past Sam's ear, shattering the primary terminal monitor into a thousand shards of liquid crystal. Sam dived through the glass window of the pod the one he'd already cracked earlier and rolled onto the hard warehouse floor.
He ignored the stabs of glass in his palms. He flipped his laptop open as he scrambled behind a heavy steel pallet.
Logic Bomb: 100%. Targeted.
"It's done!" Sam screamed into the darkness, his voice echoing through the rafters. "The script is live, Miller! It's not just a trace, it's a beacon. The FBI, the NSA, the whole damn alphabet is looking at your IP right now. You're not the man who turns off the lights. You're the man sitting in a spotlight"
A roar of frustration came from the pod. Miller stumbled out, his expensive suit covered in white powder, looking like a ghost. He fired blindly into the darkness, the muzzle flashes illuminating his desperate, sweating face.
"You think you've won?" Miller screamed. "I have men on every exit! You're never leaving this district, Sam!"
Sam didn't answer. He was already moving. He wasn't just escaping, he was beginning the process of deplatforming Miller's entire life.
He tapped his phone. He didn't call 911. Instead, he accessed the warehouse's automated logistics crane one last time. He didn't aim for Miller. He aimed for the office pod itself.
With a mechanical shriek, the massive crane arm swung across the ceiling. The three ton hook caught the top of the office pod and tore it off its foundations like a lid off a tin can.
The sound of twisting metal drowned out Miller's screams. Sam didn't stay to see if Miller was crushed or merely trapped. He turned and sprinted toward the back loading dock, toward the green pulsing lights, and toward the only things that still mattered in his world.