Chapter 119 - The Extraction Alarm
The facility groaned as the first breaching charges detonated above.
Dust and pulverised concrete rained down from the high steel girders of the observation gallery. The lights flickered once, died, and were instantly replaced by the harsh, pulsing red glare of the emergency evacuation grid.
"They're blowing the elevator shafts," Mark yelled over the rising wail of the sirens. "They're going to seal us in the lower wet dock and flood the ballast chambers to drown the evidence. We have less than eight minutes before the automated scuttle protocol triggers!"
"The submersible?" I asked, pointing through the observation glass at the sleek black hull tethered in the dark water below.
"The launch bay doors are locked from the main terminal on Level 1," Mark replied, throwing a combat vest over his wool sweater and slinging extra magazines into his pouches. "Julian’s access codes were burned when you took out his knee. To open those sea doors, someone has to physically cycle the manual hydraulic release in the main pump room."
"Where is the pump room?"
"Two levels up. Right in the path of the Vanguard assault team."
I looked at him—the man I had loved, the man who had faked his own death and condemned me to six months of living hell to play a multi-million-dollar chess game against my own blood.
"You knew this would happen," I said, my voice cutting through the klaxons. "You planned for this contingency."
Mark met my gaze, his jaw tight. "I planned for the possibility that Eleanor would rather destroy the entire covenant than face public liquidation. I didn't plan on you breaching the Curator’s inner sanctum three days ahead of my timeline."
"I got tired of waiting for justice," I said, checking the seals on my vest. "Let’s go get our children."
We moved out of the observation gallery in high-low formation, our weapons clearing the threshold into the secondary transit tunnel. The smell of high explosives and burning composite material was already drifting down the stairwells.
Above us, the rhythmic thud of suppressed automatic fire echoed through the ventilation shafts. The Vanguard was executing anyone who moved—Julian’s technicians, the security guards, the communications staff. It wasn't an assault; it was an industrial cleanup.
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We reached the junction of Level 2 when the steel bulkhead ahead of us buckled inward with a deafening *CRACK*.
The metal warped like tinfoil, shredded by a linear shaped charge. A flash-bang grenade bounced through the smoking breach, rolling across the diamond-plate deck directly toward my feet.
