The red strobe of the biometric alert in the Burnaby safehouse was suddenly drowned out by a much harsher, more chaotic light. Blue and red pulses began to bounce off the corrugated steel walls of the warehouse, accompanied by the low, heavy growl of V8 engines and the screech of tires on wet pavement.
It was 12:18 PM. Outside, the Vancouver sleet had turned the world into a grey slurry. Inside, Elias Thorne was staring at the monitor, his hand trembling as he watched the "Signal" from the Miller farm pulse with a frantic, dying rhythm.
"Elias! We have to move!" Bryan Witt roared, his hand reaching for the primary server kill-switch. "That's not Julian. That's INSET—the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team. The RCMP and CSIS just breached the perimeter. They've tracked the satellite uplink!"
"No! I have a lock!" Elias screamed, his voice breaking into a violent, hacking cough. He spat a thick, metallic-tasting phlegm onto the floor, his 40.5°C fever making his skin feel like it was being scorched by an invisible sun. "If I lose the uplink now, I lose the farm! I lose Mia!"
"If you stay, you're going to a federal black site for the next fifty years!" Witt grabbed Elias by the collar of his expensive wool coat, hauling him out of the ergonomic chair. "We have the $3.2 million in a portable cold-storage drive. The mercenaries are already at the farm—they don't need you to watch them die on a screen. Move!"
The warehouse's heavy steel loading door buckled inward with a thunderclap. A flash-bang grenade skittered across the concrete floor, detonating in a blinding, white-hot explosion of sound and light.
Elias felt the Memory Migraine hit him with the force of a physical strike. He didn't see the RCMP tactical team in their olive-drab gear; he saw a flash of a 2018 raid in Seattle. He heard the voice of a man who wouldn't be born for another five years.
"Police! Drop the data! Drop it now!"
Elias collapsed, his vision fracturing into jagged, monochromatic shards. He vomited into the server rack, the acidic fluid short-circuiting a bank of $50,000 processors in a spray of blue sparks. He was a millionaire, a ghost, and an architect, but in this moment, he was just a sick man drowning in the debris of his own future.
"Get him out of here!" Witt commanded his secondary team.
Two men grabbed Elias by the arms, dragging him toward the rear service exit. He kicked and thrashed, his eyes fixed on the primary monitor as it flickered and died. The last thing he saw was the "Signal" from the Miller farm turning a deep, bloody crimson.
Outside, Julian Vane sat in the dark basement of the farmhouse, five hundred kilometers away. He held a primitive, 2006-era cell phone to his ear, listening to the silent frequency of the satellite he knew Elias was using. He heard the static as the Burnaby hub went dark.
"The light is out, Elias," Julian whispered into the damp dark.
He reached out and flipped the first mercury switch on the propane array.
"Now," Julian murmured, his eyes bright with a manic, intellectual joy. "Let's see how you navigate the dark without your gold."