60 Seconds

I always knew I’d die young, but I never thought I’d know which sixty seconds would be my last.

A blast rocked the room. One door down, three more to go. They’d have to blow them all. These locks didn’t budge for anything. Except for explosives and the codes, and those codes were damn near impossible to get. I’d spent a year tracking them down, and apparently, I still hadn’t gotten the right ones.

The second door blew, and the room rocked, the tables and chairs jumping into the air. I planted my butt in one of those chairs. I had forty-five seconds left, and I wasn’t about to let all my hard work go to waste.

My fingers flew across the keyboard as I opened a data transfer link. A message popped up on the screen. Ready for transmission, Empress. My handler, telling me to get on with it.

A third bomb went off, and I just about fell out of my chair. The computer skidded across the desk. I slid down to keep typing. Fifteen more seconds, and it was all over for me.

I dumped files and folders into the transfer box. I hit send after every file. I might not have time to get the entire hard drive, but I’d get as much as I could.

People shouted on the other side of the door. They were rigging the last door with explosives. It’d blow any second now.
My fingers shook as I sent the last of the files. The progress bar crept across the screen, and the shouting died down. They were about to blow the door.

I went to the far side of the room and fired three rounds into the computer screen. They couldn’t stop the transfer now. My handler would get every one of their files.

As soon as I fired the last shot, the door blew off its hinges and flew into the room. The blast was deafening, but it didn’t faze the guards who came rushing in. I held up my hands, not that it would do me any good. They didn’t take prisoners. The only way I was getting out of here was in a body bag.

One of the guards shouted something. All I heard was a garbled mess, but I knew what it meant. I held my head high as the guards opened fire.

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