“The server room door has a manual override lever on the inside,” Julian said. “But the outer lock is electronic. I can try to trigger a lockdown.”

Julian’s fingers tapped the keys.

On the screen, Ethan reached the heavy metal door of the server room.

He swiped his card.

The reader flashed red.

Ethan swiped it again, faster this time.

Red again.

He banged his fist against the metal door.

“I locked him out of the primary access,” Julian said, a grim smile touching his lips.

But Ethan didn’t turn back.

He raised the heavy metal tool in his hand and struck the electronic lock face.

Sparks flew on the camera feed, though there was no sound.

He struck it again, splintering the plastic casing.

“He’s desperate,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “He knows what happens if those files get to court.”

“He’s committing a felony on camera,” Samuel noted, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Keep recording, Julian.”

“I am,” Julian said. “The feed is saving directly to my personal secure cloud storage, and I’ve started a secondary backup of the genetic database to an offsite server.”