"The lesson," Miles whispers, "is that sometimes you can do far more damage with far less force, if you apply it intelligently. Now c'mon. I think I saw some industrial cutters in one of those drawers. I'll take those and this hand light," he hefts the small light he used to see his work when he was jiggering all those data cables, "and we'll go back down and see if they help us get anywhere. Maybe there's a door I missed on the way up this column, or one of the other columns leads to a less heavily guarded potential exit, or I can use these cutters to get past the grille on that duct we tried the first time."

He retrieves the cutters, pops the panel off the column, and descends with the hand light clipped to his shirt collar.