The Fake Heiress: Captured By Her Warden

Vesper Vale hung upside down, her ankles locked around the steel beam of the ventilation shaft. The blood rushing to her head was a familiar pressure, a grounding weight in the silence.

She closed her eyes. She needed her heart rate down. Sixty. Fifty-five. Fifty.

The thermal sensors below swept the room in a rhythmic grid. If her body temperature spiked, or if her heart beat too hard against her ribs, the alarms would scream. She was a ghost in the ceiling of Sotheby's auction house, five floors above the most expensive pavement in New York City.

She opened her eyes. Below her, the bulletproof glass case glowed under the museum lights. Inside sat the Crimson Agate. It didn't look like ten million dollars. It looked like a drop of dried blood. But Vesper knew its true worth wasn't in carats, but in the data encrypted on the micro-ledger embedded within its core-a ledger that could topple an empire and block the merger that would create the world's most powerful, and corrupt, corporation.

Vesper lowered herself inches at a time. Her core muscles burned, a sharp, hot line of pain running down her abdomen. She ignored it. Pain was just information.

She pulled the diamond-tipped circle cutter from her belt. She pressed it against the glass. No sound. Just the friction of diamond eating glass. She turned her wrist, carving a perfect circle.

Down in the control van, Harding Bishop stared at the monitors. The green lines of the energy readings were flat. Too flat. As the newly appointed head of security for the Sterling-Bishop merger, he was responsible for assets on both sides of the deal. This auction was his first test.

"Status," Harding barked into his headset.

"Clear, Mr. Bishop," the security chief replied from the lobby. "Sensors are quiet."

Harding didn't like quiet. Quiet was where the rot set in. He tapped the screen. There was a micro-fluctuation in the humidity sensor near the ceiling. A breath.

"Cut the backup power," Harding said. "Force a reboot."

"Sir? That will kill the lights for three seconds."

"Do it."

Vesper felt the hum of the building die before the lights went out. The darkness was absolute.

She lost her visual anchor. Her body swayed in the void. Gravity, once her tool, became her enemy. Her fingertips grazed the invisible grid of the laser net.

One.

She engaged her core, pulling her body into a tight ball.

Two.

She reached through the hole in the glass. Her gloved fingers closed around the cold, rough stone.

Three.

The lights slammed back on.

Vesper was already gone. She had hauled herself back into the shadows of the vaulted ceiling, pressing her body flat against the ornate molding.

The doors burst open. Harding Bishop strode in, his tactical flashlight cutting through the air like a physical blade. He didn't look at the floor. He looked up.

Vesper held her breath. She could see the top of his head. He was five meters below