Chapter 354: Pounding
A drop of blood fell onto the floor.
Then a groan.
Monique stirred weakly, lying on her side in the pool of wine and dried blood, a security agent kneeling beside her, one hand supporting the back of her neck.
"Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?"
She blinked several times, the entire room slowly spinning around her, blurry, doubled. She didn’t even recognize the person in front of her right away, her foggy brain trying to put the pieces back together—where she was, what had just happened, why her head hurt so badly.
"You took a hit, Ma’am," the agent said, gently helping her sit up against the base of the desk. "Stay still for a second."
"What—" Her voice came out rough, thick, almost unrecognizable. She brought a trembling hand to her temple, feeling the crust of blood stuck in her hair, a throbbing pain hammering her skull with every heartbeat. "What happened."
"We don’t know exactly, Ma’am. We found you like this."
She stayed still for a moment, trying to piece the sequence of events back together, a blurry void occupying the last few minutes before the complete blackout. Then, slowly, something returned, a silhouette, a sudden movement on her left, a sharp pain.
Her eyes landed on the wall of screens.
"The cameras," she said, her voice gradually regaining strength. "Show me the cameras."
The agent hesitated.
"We’ve got a problem with that, Ma’am."
"What kind of problem."
"We’ve lost half the feeds. We think it’s the wine, it spilled onto the central unit during... during the incident. It must have fried something."
Monique straightened up at once, ignoring the violent dizziness that shot through her skull, her hand gripping the edge of the desk so she wouldn’t fall back down. She hauled herself up to the console, her fingers frantically tapping the controls, trying to call up any feed at all.
Black screen.
She tried another one.
Black screen.
A third, a fourth, a few crackling, unstable signals, most of them completely dead.
"No," she whispered. "No no no!"
She spun around toward the agent, her hand still pressed against her injured temple.
"Where is the bitch who did this to me?!" she spat. "Where is she?!"
"She’s in detention, Ma’am, she’s—"
"And Harlan," Monique cut in, her voice rising a notch, almost hysterical now. "Where is Harlan?! He was here! He was right here!"
The agent exchanged an uncomfortable look with a colleague behind him.
"We don’t know, Ma’am. He was already gone when we took the girl away."
Monique stayed silent for a moment, her breathing sharp, her gaze moving from the wall of dead screens to the door, a terrible realization slowly replacing the raw rage on her face.
"Find him," she said at last. "Find him now!"
In the server room, in the basement of the building, Harlan was bent over a console, his fingers frantically typing on the keyboard. An external hard drive was plugged into the main port, the progress bar advancing far too slowly for his liking.
40%... Come on. Come on.
He had cut the power to the central surveillance system a few minutes earlier, brutally unplugging the module that connected all the cameras to the control room, plunging half the feeds into darkness. That had given him a window. One single window.
This was his mission. The only thing Nash had really asked of him tonight: recover the evidence, everything that could bring Hector down for good. All he had to do was do that, get out alive, and hand over the drive.
55%...
Except the higher the percentage climbed, the more another thought began to worm its way into the back of his skull.
I’ve got them... the proof against that bastard Hector... I’ve got it. Me. Not Nash. Me.
He threw a nervous glance toward the door of the server room, his heart beating so hard it almost hurt his ribs.
77%.
All those years spent crawling in front of Hector, Monique, Apex, in front of anyone more powerful than him—and now, in this small room, he was holding in his hands exactly what was needed to bring the entire system down. Not just Hector. Everyone. Every name, every politician, every contact.
If I walk out of here with this, he thought as the bar reached 85%, I might not really need him anymore.
The thought almost made him smile, despite the panic, despite the sweat sticking his shirt to his back. He could negotiate. Sell. Or even—why not—play both sides, keep a copy for himself, a personal life insurance policy, something even Nash would never know he possessed.
95%.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor above. He froze, the thought evaporating instantly, replaced by a much more immediate fear.
The footsteps faded away.
100%. Transfer complete.
He yanked the drive from the port without waiting for a clean ejection, stuffing it into the inner pocket of his jacket, his hand lingering there a second too long, as if to make sure it was really there, really real, really his.
He rushed toward the emergency exit, racing down the service stairs, every echo of his own footsteps ringing out in the silence.
Nash needs me for now, he thought as he finally emerged into the underground parking corridor, the white neon lights blinding him after the darkness. But who says it has to stay that way forever? All I really need is to negotiate Victoria in exchange for this data... The only one who’ll fall is Hector, but if I threaten to dump everything, he can make me CEO before I cut the ground out from under him...
A loudspeaker crackled somewhere behind him. He picked up the pace, almost jogging now, his hand clenched on the pocket where the drive rested, his mind already calculating, discreetly, secretly, all the ways this night could end up working out in his favor—and only his favor.
In Aiko’s room, Nash held Jinzo’s wrist firmly, the rusty tip of the piece of wood frozen in the air, just in front of Aiko’s trembling face.
Jinzo stayed frozen, unable to understand how his hand had been stopped so easily, so quickly.
Silence fell again, a few seconds that seemed to stretch indefinitely, Nash keeping his gaze locked on Jinzo’s, without a word, without the slightest change in expression.
"There goes my mercy," he said at last.
Nash’s fist crashed into Jinzo’s jaw. The blow sent him flying straight into what was left of the door, already badly damaged from when Nash had smashed through it earlier.
The wood, already cracked, didn’t hold. Jinzo went clean through it, the entire frame collapsing with him.
Jinzo lay half-conscious amid the debris of the door, his eyes fluttering, a thin trail of blood running from his half-open mouth, his fingers twitching weakly against the carpet without finding the strength to move any further.
Nash suddenly was above him, one knee planted against the side of his torso, pinning him to the floor.
He raised his fist.
"That’s for Aiko."
The blow came down with a dull, almost muffled sound. Jinzo’s head snapped to the side, a fresh stream of blood spraying across the carpet.
He groaned weakly, his arms moving without strength in a pathetic attempt at protection.
"That’s for the shit you almost put the girls in because of your bullshit."
Another blow, the same dull sound, Jinzo’s body jerking under the impact, his head bouncing lightly against the floor before falling back down, his eyes half-rolling back.
"That’s for me."
Another punch. Jinzo’s nose cracked this time, a sharper, more brittle sound mixed with a wet gurgle.
"This one’s for me too."
Nash kept going, each blow punctuated by a short sentence, his face still just as closed off, but something different now in the way he moved, a tension in his shoulders, a speed in his gestures that no longer had anything of the icy calm from before.
His knuckles, already split open from when he had smashed through the door, now left a red trail across Jinzo’s face with every new contact, the blood mixing between the two of them until it was no longer clear whose was whose.
Jinzo’s body had stopped really reacting, his limbs falling limply after each blow, only a faint twitch still showing that he remained conscious, somewhere, deep down.
That was when Rei burst in, out of breath, stopping dead.
She froze instantly, her eyes widening at the scene.
Aiko, right behind her, froze as well, both hands covering her mouth.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment, the silence broken only by the dull, regular sound of the punches, by Nash’s ragged breathing, by those small, increasingly weak moans escaping Jinzo.
Rei felt something freeze inside her, a deep unease that had nothing to do with the fear she had felt earlier. This was different. This was seeing someone she was only just beginning to know differently, someone she had seen calm, measured, almost impassive no matter the situation, completely dissolving right in front of their eyes, the usual restraint having given way somewhere without either of them seeing it coming.
"That’s..." she started, her voice uncertain, unable to finish the sentence.
Aiko didn’t say anything either at first, her wide eyes fixed on Nash, desperately trying to put this image together with the one of the man who had held her against him a few minutes earlier—motionless, silent, almost absent, as if he had left his own body for a moment.
Nash raised his fist again.
"Nash," Aiko finally said, her voice soft, hesitant, taking half a step forward.
He didn’t stop.
"Nash," she repeated, louder this time, a tremor cutting through the word.
The fist came down once more, the same dull sound echoing through the room.
"NASH!" she finally shouted, panic clearly breaking through her voice, her hands rising in front of her as if she wanted to run to him but didn’t dare.
Rei joined her almost at the same moment, her voice breaking.
"Nash, stop, stop, please!"
Nash’s fist froze in mid-air, halfway through the motion, trembling slightly.
He stayed like that, motionless, his breathing whistling, his eyes fixed on Jinzo’s bloodied face beneath him without really seeing it, as if something inside him was painfully trying to surface again.
Silence fell once more, disturbed only by his ragged breathing and by Jinzo’s weak, rough gasps, barely conscious.
Nash remained frozen for a long moment, fist still suspended, before something gently gave way inside him. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, held the air for a second before releasing it slowly, and finally straightened up, stepping away from the slumped body on the floor.
He stood there for a moment, motionless, staring at his own hands—the split knuckles, the blood that was no longer only his mixed across them, a light but undeniable tremor running through his fingers.
"Yeah," he said at last, his voice more controlled again, even if that tremor still lingered, almost imperceptible. "Yeah. I fucked up."