The iron basement door swung shut with a quiet, solid thud.
Jack threw the heavy wooden crossbar into place, sealing the dark cellar from the rainy streets of Hell's Kitchen.
He walked over to his oak workbench, turning on his battery-powered desk lamp.
The warm yellow glow illuminated the customized shortwave radio receiver, his yellow notebook, and the dark tools scattered across the surface.
Jack reached into his charcoal trench coat, pulling out the loot from the church scuffle:
Three thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills ($1,500 cash).
The small black USB drive stamped with the red Russian eagle crest.
He set the money aside and laid the USB drive in the center of the wooden table.
"Let's see what Yuri was trying so hard to protect," Jack whispered softly.
At 1.8% synchronization, Jack didn't own a military-grade supercomputer.
He didn't have access to S.H.I.E.L.D. decryption algorithms.
What he did have was a second-hand laptop he had modified with parts from his shortwave radio rig, and his Basic Lockpicking & Wiretapping Mastery skill—which extended to digital logic and signal encryption bypasses.
Jack plugged the USB drive into the side port of his laptop.
Blink. Blink.
The screen flickered, displaying a dark red lock screen written entirely in Russian cyrillic characters:
[ SECURITY GATEWAY: 256-BIT ENCRYPTION ] [ ENTER PASSCODE OR HARD DRIVE WIPES IN 60 SECONDS ]
A countdown timer began ticking down in bright red numbers:
00:59... 00:58... 00:57...
Jack didn't panic.
His Poker Face (Tier 1) trait kept his heart rate perfectly steady, his breathing slow and measured.
Instead of trying to guess the password, Jack used a copper jumper wire attached to his radio receiver's frequency oscillator, touching the exposed pin on the USB drive's hardware board.
He forced a voltage spike directly into the security chip's memory controller, freezing the self-destruct timer at 00:41.
Click. Click. Clack.
Jack's pale fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing the corrupt security layer and pulling raw hex data directly onto his screen.
Three seconds later, the red lock screen shattered into blue directory folders.
Jack leaned closer, his eyes scanning the decrypted files.
It wasn't a list of small-time drug buyers. It wasn't a list of stolen car VIN numbers.
It was an architectural blueprint and shipping manifest for an underground vault beneath a high-end luxury art gallery on 57th Street, Midtown.
[ FACILITY: MIDTOWN ART VAULT - SECTOR 9 ] [ CONTENTS: UNREGISTERED DIAMONDS, bearer BONDS ($4.5M VALUE), BLACK MARKET ARTIFACTS ] [ SECURITY: 4 GUARD ROTATIONS, SILENT ALARM TO NYPD 17TH PRECINCT ]
Jack stared at the numbers on the screen.
Four point five million dollars in unregistered bearer bonds and raw diamonds.
This was the Russian mob's primary emergency war chest in Manhattan—their hidden reserve fund in case Kingpin or S.H.I.E.L.D. moved against them.
Jack slowly closed the laptop screen, the dim blue light fading into darkness.
He rested his chin on his crossed hands, a wide, razor-sharp smile expanding across his face in the quiet cellar.
"Four point five million," Jack purred into the dark.
"Now... that is what I call a real template multiplier."
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