The three-foot-thick titanium blast doors of the Blood-Tax Central Star Bank groaned under internal hydraulic pressure.
Behind the reinforced steel plates, CFO Mordecai paced across his executive office like a caged rat.
His hands shook so violently that he dropped a crystal ledger into an industrial incinerator chute. Across the room, five junior treasurers scrambled in panic, shredding paper records of predatory loan contracts and offshore slush funds.
Two treasurers tried to haul a heavy iron chest of gold bars toward the subterranean escape hatch.
“Forget the documents!” Mordecai hissed, saliva spraying across his velvet cuffs. “Load the private sub-orbital shuttle! Take the gold through the sewer tunnels!”
The chief treasurer kicked the escape hatch open, only to freeze in sheer horror.
Standing inside the tunnel was Tie Niu, who had already welded the drainage grates shut with four solid iron beams.
“Going somewhere, boys?” Tie Niu’s booming chuckle echoed up the sewer pipe. “The front door is the only way out today.”
