Adventure of Dallas Fontaine 2

Dallas drives his shoulder through the last splintered panel, and the barricade gives way in a shower of wood and bent metal. The control room opens up ahead, cramped with servers, blinking rails, and a terminal glowing like a wound.

Alder March freezes at the main console, one hand hovering over the kill-switch, the other slick with sweat. The mirrored logs are already gone from his reach, and he knows it.

Curtis hangs back near the door, watching the dead line of the barricade and the kill-switch with a steady, grim stare. Red light pulses across the server racks, and the whole room feels one heartbeat from collapse.

Dallas closes the distance, and March’s fingers tense over the switch, caught between erasing the truth and surrendering to it.

Dallas catches March’s wrist in the split second before the kill-switch drops. Knuckles hit the console, hard, and the red-lit room jolts with the impact.

March twists, but Dallas pins the hand flat against the terminal housing. The switch stays trapped, trembling under both their weight.

A thin alarm chirps from the console, not a full siren, just a warning tone trying and failing to become panic.

Dallas keeps March’s arm locked to the panel. Across the room, Curtis steps in from the doorway, eyes on the desk bell and the exposed wiring.

Dallas drives a knee up into March’s groin. March folds with a strangled gasp, his trapped arm jerking off the terminal as his weight collapses toward the floor.

The kill-switch slips free and skitters under the console lip. The warning chirp stutters, then steadies into a sullen beep.

March drops to one knee, then both hands, one palm braced against the red-lit floor. His face drains pale as he glares up through the pain.

Curtis crosses in closer, eyes snapping to the desk bell and the exposed console. The barricade debris shifts under his shoe, and the room’s emergency red light pulses over the surviving evidence.

Dallas levels the revolver and answers March’s glare with a flat, final shot. The report cracks through the red wash, and March jerks backward off his knees.

He hits the floor hard beside the console, one arm going slack across the tiles. The kill-switch stays buried under the console lip, and the warning beep keeps counting out the room’s last nerves.

Curtis steps in two paces, eyes locked on the terminal and the desk bell, then crouches by the server rack to snag the printed logs before anything can burn.

Emergency red light pulses across March’s still body, the barricade debris, and the live terminal. Somewhere in the room, a relay fan whines harder as Curtis looks up at Dallas and the door.