Read Online Sunfail by Steven Savile - Free Book Online

here without backup. He was armed, though. Jake could make out the telltale bulge of a holstered gun at the small of his back. The leather jacket did a good job concealing it if you didn’t know what you were looking for. Jake did; his training ran deep.
    He heard the gunshots before the last member of the group stepped inside, letting the door swing shut after him.
    The walker rushed out of the shadows, catching the door before it fully closed.
    Jake was already moving. He wasn’t thinking, it was all instinct. Once a warrior . . .
    He stepped through into total darkness, with no idea what he was getting himself into.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    A FEW HOURS AGO THE NYSE’S LABYRINTHINE CORRIDORS were bright, garishly lit by the sleek fluorescent panels running along the wall’s length.
    Now everything beyond the door was pitch black.
    One wall was tiled while the other was mirrored. He only knew that because he’d seen through the open door. With the outside world locked away, he might as well have stepped through into nothing .
    Supposedly the loss of one sense would heighten the remaining ones, but that was bullshit. The darkness just meant he heard the blood of his pulse in his ears louder, not that he was more attuned to the sounds of the dark.
    Soft footsteps echoed up ahead. Jake could just make out the slumped shadows of dead guards. He knelt to check for a pulse: nothing. Same at the second and the third. No survivors. He picked a path through the dead.
    Jake closed his eyes, counting through eleven Mississippis, then blinked and started after the footfalls. It wasn’t foolproof, but the short count had given his eyes a few more precious seconds to adjust to the dark. Not that he wanted to see more than he already could. There was a faint light at his back that added definition to it now.
    He kept one hand on the wall and moved forward until he reached a glass door. It opened with the slightest touch, which felt inherently wrong. Security should have been airtight. Without power, though, and without the computer systems online, nothing was working. And that meant there was nothing to stop him from walking right down to the trading floor. Not that anyone was trading.
    The place was a mausoleum to money. Jake crept forward until he reached a pair of steps. Beyond them, the hallway split, running left and right to ring the floor.
    He peered down the left-side passage. He saw nothing as it disappeared into absolute darkness. To the right, though, he caught the tiniest glint of something shifting through the blackness of the corridor. He tried to focus on the shape as it resolved into the shadow of a man. Ahead of both of them came the sudden, shocking detonation of concussion grenades. There was no alarm—which meant they had to be inside the system as well as the building. This was rapidly escalating from really bad to a whole new plane of existential torment.
    Jake didn’t move. Fumbling in the dark was going to make noise, and even after the concussion grenades, noise was going to bring trouble. The only smart thing to do was turn around and get the fuck out of there. But the smart choice was a coward’s choice. He wasn’t a coward. He could handle himself, even if the only thing he had in common with any of the action heroes of the world was that he was expendable. He wasn’t walking away, not now. Not ever. The fact that he was a black man breaking into the still heart of capitalism didn’t pass him by either. His would be an easy death to explain on the evening news if things went south.
    His one advantage was that no one was expecting him to crash the party. His only tool, the mini-Maglite, wasn’t the kind of thing he could use to break a few skulls, and lighting up the trading floor wasn’t an option. This was an advance recon. Simple as that. Do not engage the enemy, soldier.
    The corridors crossed and crossed again, offering what felt like hundreds of choices. He moved slowly, trailing his fingers against the