Chapter 89 - The Floodgates of Calumet
The ship gave another massive lurch, more violent than the last.
A deafening crack split the air above us. The massive glass bulkhead overlooking the subterranean dry docks fractured into a spiderweb of millions of glittering fissures.
Outside, in the dark trench, a massive underwater landslide was triggered. TONS of glacial silt and crushed limestone slammed into the exterior hull of the leviathan.
*"SECTOR 4 BREACHED,"* the automated voice blared, red emergency sirens spinning into life across the ballroom. *"CORE CONTAINMENT LOST. COMMENCING EMERGENCY BALLAST PURGE IN TWENTY MINUTES."*
Nicholas groaned, pushing himself up against the shattered glass wall. The neural shock had subsided enough for him to retrieve his sidearm. He leveled it with both hands at his mother.
"It's over, Miriam," Nicholas rasped, blood trickling from his nose. "The hull is compromising. Even if you activate the fleet, you're trapped down here."
Miriam looked at her ruined hand, then at the two of us. Despite the catastrophic alerts wailing around us, a terrifying, manic laughter bubbled up from her chest.
"Trapped?" she laughed, the sound warped and crackling with static. "You fools. You still think this ship was built to conquer the surface?"
She backed slowly toward the central podium behind the dining table.
"This ship wasn't built to rise," she whispered, her eyes burning with fanatic madness. "It was built to burrow. Calumet is not a bunker, Nicholas. It is an excavation bore. It extends two miles beneath the bedrock of the North American craton. The fleet was never meant to float on the lake—it was meant to seal the vault beneath it forever, leaving the rest of the world to drown in the deluge!"
With her functional right hand, she slammed a heavy crimson master lever mounted to the console.
A deep, subterranean thrum shook the foundations of the world.
Through the cracked glass bulkhead, we watched as the dry docks below began to detach from the leviathan's central spine. Massive explosive bolts detonated along the keel, severing the white vessel from its mooring lines.
"If I cannot harvest your sequence willingly, Clara," Miriam shouted over the roar of rushing water, "then the pressure at two miles deep will crush your skull until the neural data leaks out of your ears!"
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The floor beneath our feet titled at a sickening forty-five-degree angle as the leviathan's nose pitched straight down into the abyssal trench.
***
