Chapter 5 - Infiltration and the Hardware Key
The rain was coming down in sheets when our battered rental car pulled into the underground parking garage of a nondescript office building in downtown DC. Marcus Vance was waiting by the emergency exit—a thin man in his late thirties with dark circles under his eyes and a nervous twitch in his left hand.
When I stepped out of the car, pulling the hood of my parka down to shadow my bruised face, Marcus flinched.
"Jesus, Maddox... what happened to you?" he whispered, his eyes widening at the sight of my swollen cheek.
"My father happened, Marcus," I said, my voice cutting through the hum of the parking garage exhaust fans. "And now he's trying to bury me on national television. I need your help to dig him up."
Marcus hesitated, looking around the empty garage as if secret service agents were lurking behind every concrete pillar. "Maddox, you don't understand. Rhys has federal judges in his back pocket. If I help you hack his congressional terminal, I'm looking at twenty years in a federal penitentiary."
I stepped into his personal space, my eyes locking onto his with terrifying clarity. "If you do nothing, a corrupt monster continues to run this country while destroying the lives of everyone who gets in his way. Look at my face, Marcus. This isn't politics. This is war. Are you with us, or are you on his side?"
Marcus swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He reached into his trench coat pocket and pulled out a small, matte-black USB drive.
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"This is a master network bypass key," Marcus said, his voice trembling slightly. "It plugs directly into the legacy router port behind the mahogany credenza in Rhys's private Capitol office. It gives unrestricted local network access for exactly ten minutes before the firewall detects the breach."
I snatched the drive from his hand and tucked it securely into my pocket. "Ten minutes is all we need. Stay clean, Marcus. If this goes sideways, you were never here."
