Chapter 16 - Blood on the Steel Rails
The heavy iron pipe struck Montgomery squarely across the cheekbone with a sickening crack.
The billionaire staggered back, blood spraying from his split jaw, his aristocratic composure shattering into a howl of raw, undignified rage. He lunged at Clara, his gloved hands reaching for her throat, but Mara was already there.
Mara intercepted him mid-stride, driving a brutal right hook straight into Montgomery’s ribs, followed by an open-palm strike beneath his chin that knocked him sprawling into the freezing mud of the drainage channel.
"Clara, grab Miller!" Mara roared, kicking Montgomery’s chrome pistol deep into the dark water of the sewer main where it vanished beneath the silt.
Miller was struggling to stand, his left shoulder drenched in blood, his face gray with shock. "I'm hit... collarbone... Mara, we can't stay down here. Montgomery’s extraction team has perimeter sensors at every street grate. They'll drop tear gas into the lines within three minutes."
"Where do the freight tracks lead?" Mara demanded, hoisting Miller’s good arm over her shoulder while Julianne held Clara’s trembling hand, guiding Lily through the steam.
"The old Chicago Tunnel Company lines," Miller coughed, spitting dark blood onto the ballast. "They connect beneath the Loop to the basement of the old LaSalle Street Station. It’s an abandoned switching yard. We can surface inside the rail terminal."
Behind them, Montgomery dragged himself onto his hands and knees in the muck, his face disfigured, his silver hair soaked in sewage. He looked at Mara with eyes full of murder.
"You're dead, Bennett!" Montgomery coughed, blood bubbling between his teeth. "You hear me? The whole city belongs to the Circle! There is no train... no court... no border that will save you!"
"Keep talking, Montgomery," Mara spat, not even turning around. "Every word buys you another twenty years at ADX Florence."
They fled down the narrow gauge tracks, the ancient, rusted rails guiding their boots through the dark. The air grew colder, the sulfurous smell of steam giving way to the sharp, metallic stench of diesel and winter frost.
Above them, the distant shriek of steel wheels on steel rails grew louder. They were approaching the subterranean throat of LaSalle Street Station.
Clara was fading fast. Her breath came in shallow, ragged gasps, her hospital gown soaked through with sweat and rainwater that leaked from the street grates forty feet above. Julianne carried baby Hope now, cradling the newborn against her chest beneath her coat, while Clara clung to Mara’s free arm.
"Mara..." Clara whispered, her knees buckling against the wooden ties. "I can't... I can't feel my legs."
"You can, and you will," Mara said, stopping and gripping her sister’s face with both hands, forcing Clara to look into her eyes. "Look at me, Clara. Look at your sister. You survived nine months of Evelyn’s venom. You survived giving birth on a frozen floor. You are not dying in a sewer."
"My baby..."
"Hope is right here," Julianne said gently, stepping close and peeling back the coat to show the sleeping infant’s peaceful face. "She needs her mother, Clara. Keep walking."
A sudden blast of frigid winter air hit them as the tunnel opened into an enormous subterranean cavern—the abandoned subterranean maintenance yard beneath LaSalle Station. Dozens of disused passenger cars sat parked on dead-end sidings, covered in decades of graffiti and grime.
At the far end of the yard, fifty feet up an industrial iron staircase, stood a reinforced steel security door with a glowing green exit light.
"That's it," Miller wheezed, his weight sagging heavily against Mara. "That door leads directly into the terminal concourse. CPD has a precinct substation on the mezzanine. If we hit that floor, Montgomery’s private army can't touch us without starting a full-scale military incident."
They hurried across the open tracks toward the stairs.
Suddenly, a blinding halogen beam cut through the darkness from the upper catwalk, pinning them in an unforgiving circle of white light.
*Crack!*
A high-powered rifle bullet tore through the gravel at Mara’s feet, showering her shins with sharp stone fragments.
From the overhead catwalk, standing beneath the industrial light with a custom bolt-action sniper rifle resting against the railing, stood Evelyn Voss.
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Her face was bandaged where Mara had struck her in the hotel lobby, her eyes manic, her mouth twisted into a triumphant, psychotic grin.
"Did you really think Uncle Julian was the only one who knew the tunnels?" Evelyn’s voice rang out from the rafters, amplified by the cavernous acoustics of the rail yard. "Drop the child, Julianne. Drop it, or I put a three-hundred-grain bullet through Clara's spine."
