Chapter 33 · The Live Key

The vault door's already open when Ryan limps through it.

Not physically open. The steel's still there, ten centimeters thick, military-grade alloy that could take a direct missile hit. But the access panel's lit up green, every authentication layer peeled back like someone just walked through with a master key. The kind of master key that doesn't exist. The kind corporate security architects lose sleep over.

Ryan stops three meters out, one hand braced against the corridor wall. His leg's still half-numb from the burn and his nervous system's doing that thing where it can't decide if he's hot or cold. Sweat runs down his neck but his fingers feel like ice.

The copy's standing in front of the vault's inner door. Same jacket, same boots, same way of holding his weight off his left leg. Ryan watches him tap something on the biometric scanner. Watches the scanner flash green without taking a blood sample or retinal scan.

"How," Ryan says.

The copy doesn't turn around. "You know how."

"I really don't."

"We're the key." The copy's voice is flat. "Both of us. They didn't just copy your neural map, they copied the authentication seeds. Military-grade biometric tokens.