The monitor had just flickered to life, its blue light casting long shadows across the concrete floor.

“I thought the network here was dormant,” I said, approaching the desk.

The screen displayed a progress bar under a red warning banner.

“System override initiated,” Vance read over my shoulder.

“What is it doing?” I asked.

“Someone is accessing the local server from an external network,” Vance said, his voice tightening.

He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, but the terminal refused to respond to his inputs.

“They’re executing a remote wipe,” Vance said, staring at the screen.

“Gregory’s people,” I said.

“They must have detected our physical bypass on the front gate lock,” Vance said.

The progress bar on the screen reached twelve percent.

“They’re deleting the digital inventory logs,” Vance said. “If those go, we lose the link to Gregory’s accounts.”

“How long do we have?” I asked.

“Less than five minutes before the local hard drives are completely erased,” he said.

“Is there a physical backup?” I asked, looking around the cluttered desk.

“There should be a master manifest folder in the main filing cabinet,” Vance said, pointing to the steel cabinet.