The Judge turned her cold, flint-gray eyes onto the waiting tactical stack:
“Now… let’s go show the Chief Justice… what happens when an auditor comes to audit the Court.”
CHAPTER 3: THE VAULT BENEATH THE ROBING ROOM
The subterranean corridors beneath the Supreme Court do not resemble the quiet, marble-clad galleries above.
Sixty feet beneath the Great Hall, past the private chambers and the rare book archival stacks, lies Sub-Level Three // The High Judicial Continuity Crypt.
The walls are not limestone; they are four-foot-thick blocks of native Virginia greenstone and reinforced blast-concrete, lined with high-voltage copper busbars and industrial air conduits humming in a continuous, sixty-cycle subterranean thrum: whirrr-clank… whirrr-clank.
The tactical stack moved with fluid, synchronized velocity down the concrete corridor:
Twelve SOG operators in sterile dark-charcoal Nomex drysuits, Level IV boron-carbide plate carriers, and Ops-Core ballistic helmets fitted with panoramic night-vision brackets folded onto their foreheads. Across their chests hung suppressed SIG Sauer MCX Rattlers, their weapon-mounted PEQ-15 infrared lasers cutting through the humid bunker air in twelve razor-sharp spears of invisible light.
