Smith kept his head down, trying to relax. They had one chance at this and he couldn’t afford to blow it. According to Ito, there was one systems administrator and one security man inside. What the scientist couldn’t tell him was which of those men would come to the door. It was precisely these kinds of operational unknowns that Smith spent his life trying to avoid.

After an endless thirty seconds of back and forth, the door finally slid aside. Ito glanced back at him and gave a gruff order before walking inside. Smith followed along obediently, head still bowed, but eyes straining upward.

The room was as described, no more than twenty feet square with walls mostly hidden by computer equipment. There was a single desk with a terminal on it to the right and two rolling chairs—only one of which was currently occupied.

The tech was a young man with an artificial reddish tint to his hair and the air of having downed a few too many espressos that morning. He was talking a mile a minute, gesturing maniacally toward his screen as Ito approached and put a hand on the back of his chair.

The security man was lifting his wrist to his face, undoubtedly to report the unusual situation into a radio microphone secured there. Smith backed toward him slowly, pretending to watch Ito, but really focused on the guard.

The angle of Smith’s body would make it hard to for the man to get a clear view of his face, but this wasn’t just some rent-a-cop. He wasn’t going to be fooled for more than a few seconds.

It turned out to be even less than that. The man’s left hand suddenly stopped rising toward his mouth and his right went for a gun in an exposed shoulder holster.

Smith spun, going for the man’s throat with the screwdriver but knowing there was no way in hell he’d connect. At the last moment he let his knees collapse and redirected the blade to the man’s upper thigh. It sank halfway to the hilt but the guard barely seemed to notice, smoothly wrapping his hand around the grip of a Sig Sauer P226.

Smith ignored the shouts coming from behind him, forced to rely on the dying scientist to handle the computer tech. The gun was nearly free now and Smith lunged, slamming his shoulder into the man’s elbow with the full force of his 180-pound frame. The pain flared in his injured back, but the impact had its intended effect—the gun was rammed back into its holster.