Chapter 39 - CHAOS AT ZERO HOUR
The roar of the Atlantic Ocean swallowing the lower citadel was deafening. Water rushed across the concert stage, rising past Daniel's ankles in seconds, freezing and violent.
"The extraction chopper is on the roof!" Miller yelled, grabbing Daniel's shoulder, pulling him toward the main elevator shaft. "The HRT team secured the stairwell! We have to go NOW!"
Daniel held Lily tightly against his chest. The little girl was crying now, clinging to his neck with desperate, terrified strength. "Daddy! Daddy, don't let me go!"
"Never, baby! I've got you! I've got you!" Daniel shouted over the rising roar of water.
Suddenly, an iron grating slammed down across the exit corridor.
Grace stood on the opposite side of the steel bars, high on a catwalk overlooking the lower submarine pen. Water was already surging around her ankles, but she seemed completely indifferent to her impending death. Her hair was wild, her crimson dress soaked and torn, her eyes burning with a brilliant, lunatic light.
In her right hand, she held an industrial remote detonator—the central override for the island’s scuttling charges.
"You think you can take her from me, Daniel?" Grace laughed, her voice echoing maniacally through the iron grating. "You think you can just walk out of here and play house? She is my creation! If she doesn't belong to the world, she belongs to the sea!"
"Grace, don't do this!" Daniel slammed against the iron gate. "Look at your daughter! She is your flesh and blood!"
"She is nothing without my genius!" Grace screamed.
She turned and sprinted toward the exterior gantry suspended three hundred feet above the churning, violent sea.
"Miller, take Lily!" Daniel shouted, thrusting the girl into the detective's arms.
"Daniel, no! What the hell are you doing?!" Miller barked, struggling to hold the crying child with his one good arm.
"She has the master override! If she blows the main foundation, the roof helipad collapses with all of you on it! Get her to the helicopter, Miller! GET HER OUT!"
Without waiting for an answer, Daniel grabbed a heavy steel fire axe from the wall mount, smashed the hydraulic lock of a maintenance bypass door, and threw himself through the opening, chasing the crimson dress into the roaring dark.
The spray of the storm hit him like a wall of ice.
Daniel burst onto the narrow, suspended steel gantry hanging over the sheer cliff face of Devil’s Spire. Below them, massive black ocean swells smashed against the volcanic jagged rocks with the force of falling buildings. Wind screamed at eighty miles an hour, threatening to rip him from the catwalk.
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At the very end of the platform, standing on the edge of oblivion, was Grace Sterling.
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