My Parents Skipped the Funeral of My Husband and Two Children for My Sister’s Birthday, but Six Months Later, One Headline Made Them Panic When They Discovered What I Had Done. / Chapter 47 / 121

Chapter 47 - The Fire Beneath the Stone

The sound of shattering glass and gunfire tore through the rotunda. High-velocity rounds ricocheted off the flipped steel tabletop with deafening, bell-like rings, spraying sparks across the concrete floor.

One of the guards stumbled, cursed, and fell over the severed power conduits. I rolled onto my knees, my left arm still weighed down by the dangling steel cuff, and lunged for the fallen guard’s sidearm. My fingers closed around the textured grip of the Glock 19 just as his heavy boot swung toward my ribs.

The impact drove the air from my lungs, but adrenaline burned hotter than the pain. I fired three times through the lower shelf of the overturned table. The guard collapsed with a wet gasp.

Across the room, Victoria was already moving with terrifying military efficiency. She had drawn her automatic pistol, firing a disciplined two-round burst into the server relay above my head, severing the manual override switch.

"Seal the blast bulkheads!" Victoria’s voice cut through the blaring sirens like a whip. "Do not let her reach the service spine!"

The hydraulic doors leading to the holding cells groaned, sliding closed in heavy iron slabs. On the wall monitors, which were flickering and dying as the auxiliary power drained, I saw Eleanor and Evelyn shrieking in terror as their cell plunged into total darkness.

I didn't look back at them. The past was dead. It had died on an icy highway six months ago.

I scrambled on hands and knees through the shattered remnants of the glass rotunda wall, shards slicing through my palms and knees, and plunged into the secondary utility corridor. Behind me, the remaining two mercenaries opened fire, heavy automatic rounds chewing the concrete doorframe into flying shards of grit and dust.

The red emergency lights pulsed in rhythmic, heart-like intervals: *beat... beat... beat...*

The corridor led downward, following the natural downward slant of the ancient limestone cavern toward the primary geothermal vents. Beatrice had left a diagram hidden in the binding of her old childhood poetry book—a book Eleanor had tossed into a donation bin, which I had retrieved fifteen years ago.

*The water table,* Beatrice’s handwritten note had read. *If the wolf corners you in the quarry, open the reservoir.*

I reached the bottom of the steel grated staircase, my lungs burning, the Glock gripped tightly in my blood-smeared hand. Ahead lay the massive, circular pressure hatch labeled: *HYDROLOGIC EQUALIZATION - MAIN DRAINAGE.*

A sudden vibration shook the floor—not the hum of the emergency generators, but the distinct, rhythmic *thud-thud-thud* of a breaching charge detonating at the quarry’s surface entrance three levels above.