Chapter 70 - The Gathering of the Broken
I plunged into the freezing black seawater filling Level 4. The cold hit my chest like a physical sledgehammer, forcing the breath from my lungs as I swam through the sunken corridor illuminated only by the narrow beam of my tactical flashlight.
Floating debris, severed wiring, and dead documents drifted through the murky brine like ghostly memories.
Ahead, the steel door of Sarah’s personal archive remained sealed. Using Vance’s keycard and the encrypted biometric key from my wrist drive, I jammed the interface into the emergency lock. The mechanical tumblers groaned, fighting against the water pressure, before finally yielding with a heavy, sucking release.
Inside, suspended in a waterproof vacuum chamber, sat an old iron strongbox bearing the Sterling crest.
I pried it open. Inside was not a digital drive, nor a list of bank accounts.
It was a thick manila envelope sealed with red wax, bearing my name in Sarah Sterling’s handwriting, alongside a physical key to an address in rural Maine—a place I had never heard of, far away from private jets, offshore vaults, and Thanksgiving dinners filled with venom.
Beneath the envelope lay an audio cassette labeled simply: *The Truth About Emily.*
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The structural integrity of the room gave way. The reinforced bulkhead above me groaned and cracked, unleashing a wall of pressurized ocean water that slammed me backward against the iron wall.
Darkness encroached at the edges of my vision as the weight of the sea crushed down on the room, the freezing current dragging me into the churning depths.
