Chapter 62 - The Severed Circuit
The monitors shrieked in protest. The clean white glare of the facility fractured into a strobe of crimson emergency warning lights. The upload progress bar, hovering at *98%*, sputtered and locked into an error loop: *TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED — PARITY FAILURE AT NODE 7.*
Cynthia’s aristocratic veneer cracked into a mask of pure venom. "You insolent whelp!"
Before she could reach into the folds of her tailored coat, Harrison’s body convulsed on the floor. He wasn't dead. His blood-slicked fingers caught Cynthia's ankle with the desperate strength of a dying man.
"Run, Julian!" Harrison choked out, a spray of crimson flecking his pale lips. "The mountain... is already rigged!"
Cynthia stamped her heel downward with brutal, calculated savagery, crushing Harrison’s wrist against the concrete. A sickening crunch echoed through the room, but the two seconds Harrison bought us were enough. Clara fired twice. The rounds shattered the reinforced glass display above Cynthia’s head, showering the matriarch in crystalline shrapnel and forcing her to duck behind the central steel pillar.
"Security team, purge the communications deck!" Cynthia snarled into a hidden collar mic, her voice shrill with sudden desperation. "Kill them all! Extract the child’s retina post-mortem if you must!"
Above us, the ceiling grates blew outward. Heavy-set tactical operatives in matte-black armor dropped onto the metal catwalks, suppressed submachine guns already chattering. Bullets tore into the server racks, sending plumes of sparks and pressurized freon gas billowing across the floor.
"Clara, grab Harrison!" I yelled, firing three suppressive rounds at the nearest catwalk to force the operatives back.
"He’s gone, Julian!" Clara shouted back over the roar of gunfire. She was shielding Lily beneath a fallen metal partition.
I looked down. Harrison’s eyes were fixed on the flickering ceiling, wide and unseeing, his final breath rattling out into the cold air. But in his slack left hand, clamped tightly against his palm, was an access cylinder marked with an embossed red phoenix—the manual release for the subterranean ventilation conduits.
I lunged forward, sweeping Harrison's key from his dead grasp as bullets cratered the concrete inches from my knees.
"Julian, look!" Clara screamed.
May you like
At the far end of the chamber, a pressurized escape hatch was hissing open. Cynthia Vance, clutching her obsidian handbag tightly against her ribs, stepped into a pneumatic lift cage. She looked back at us through the reinforced glass, her bleeding face twisted into a grotesque sneer as the lift plummeted into the dark core of the mountain.
"She’s heading for the train lines!" I shouted. "The facility is going to self-destruct! Move!"
