Chapter 5 - SABOTAGE IN SILICON VALLEY
The headquarters of Apex Mobility was under lockdown by dawn.
Jamal didn't waste time going through corporate HR or legal channels. He bypassed the main lobby entirely, using a master override keycard he had personally re-coded in the basement maintenance terminal to shut down the external elevators leading to the executive floors.
Victoria walked beside him, still wearing his oversized canvas jacket over her ruined evening wear. The contrast between them was striking: the billionaire heiress with smeared mascara and wet hair, and the rugged Detroit mechanic whose steady, rhythmic stride commanded the hallway.
When they kicked open the double glass doors of the R&D software lab, thirty programmers and systems analysts looked up from their dual-monitor workstations in absolute terror.
At the front of the room, standing beside a high-speed telemetry server, stood Dr. Julian Vance. He had his personal leather briefcase open on his desk, feverishly transferring data onto an encrypted thumb drive.
"Dr. Vance," Victoria's voice cut through the hum of the cooling towers like a diamond scalpel.
Julian jumped, dropping the drive onto the carpet. His face turned the color of curdled milk. "Victoria! What... what are you doing here so early? I heard about the tragic accident on the I-80 corridor. I was just... archiving the black box telemetry to prepare a defense for the Department of Transportation."
Jamal walked forward, his heavy work boots leaving faint damp tracks on the anti-static flooring. He didn't say a word. He simply reached down, picked up the encrypted thumb drive from the carpet, and held it up to the fluorescent light.
"That's a military-grade dry-erase protocol drive," Jamal said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "It doesn't archive telemetry, Julian. It burns the root partitions on flash controllers so forensic investigators can't trace which terminal issued the command."
"You don't know what you're talking about!" Julian stammered, backing away until his spine hit the server rack. "You're a janitor! A common grease monkey who got lucky with a wrench!"
Jamal moved with explosive, frightening speed.
Before Julian could blink, Jamal’s left hand closed around the lapels of Julian's designer cashmere blazer, hoisting the hundred-and-eighty-pound engineer three inches off the floor and slamming him back against the steel casing of the server rack.
"I was an aviation ordnance technician in the Third Marine Aircraft Wing before I ever picked up a broom, you little parasite," Jamal growled, his face inches from Julian’s nose. "I know an ultrasonic line-cutter when I see one. I know what kind of clearance is required to enter the fabrication bay at midnight. And I know who signed the maintenance work order for the I-80 test run."
"Jamal, stop!" Victoria ordered, though her voice lacked conviction.
Jamal didn't drop him, but he slackened his grip just enough to let Julian's toes touch the linoleum. "Who paid you, Vance? Apex stock didn't drop fast enough to make shorting it profitable. So who bought you out?"
Julian was gasping for breath, his eyes darting toward the security cameras mounted in the corners. "You... you can't prove anything."
"I don't have to," Victoria said, stepping up beside Jamal. Her posture had regained its terrifying corporate poise, her eyes blazing with cold, predatory rage. "I just ran a background sweep on your offshore accounts through our corporate security vendor, Julian. Three hundred thousand dollars cleared into a shell entity registered in the Cayman Islands at midnight yesterday. Wire origin: Titan Autonomous. Our direct competitor."
Julian’s face collapsed. He slid down against the server rack, his hands trembling. "They promised me a seat on their board. They said the company was going down anyway once the German syndicate pulled out! They said Victoria was too stubborn to sell!"
Victoria turned to her head of physical security, who had just stepped through the broken doors with two armed officers.
"Take him to the conference room," Victoria commanded, her tone devoid of all human warmth. "Call the FBI's corporate espionage unit. And if a single byte of data leaves this building before the federal agents arrive, I will personally see to it that everyone in this room spends the next twenty years in a federal penitentiary."
As Julian was hauled out in zip-ties, Victoria turned to Jamal. She was trembling slightly, the adrenaline of the confrontation wearing off, leaving her exhausted and vulnerable.
"Titan Autonomous," she murmured, pressing two fingers against her forehead. "Their CEO, Marcus Cole... he proposed an acquisition six months ago. I rejected him publicly at the Detroit Auto Show."
"Men like that don't take no for an answer from women who build better machines than they do," Jamal said softly.
Victoria looked up at him, her gaze lingering on the steady line of his jaw and the quiet, protective strength radiating from him. "He won't stop with Julian, Jamal. If Titan bought our lead engineer, they have our delivery schedules. They know our entire rollout."
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"Then we don't use your schedule," Jamal said with a faint, wicked smirk. "We build our own."
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