Chapter 44 - WHEN THE GROUND BEGAN TO BREATHE
Noah’s mouth opened, but the voice that spilled out was not that of a four-year-old child. It was a dual-toned resonance, harmonizing with the electrical hum of the cavern around them.
“*Signal acquired,*” the child droned, his eyes rolling back until only the whites showed. “*Depth: four hundred fathoms. Vector: three-three-zero. The cradle is surfacing.*”
“Noah! Stop it! Look at me!” Ethan sobbed, shaking the boy gently, desperate to shatter the trance. “Noah, it’s Daddy! Look at my face!”
Margaret didn't look at Noah. She kept her front sight focused squarely between Miller’s eyes, her breathing disciplined, her heart pounding a cold, predatory cadence.
“You think you hold the cards because of a telemetry switch?” Margaret said, her voice dropping into an icy register that made Miller’s smug smile flicker for a fraction of a second. “You spent thirty years in corporate acquisitions, Miller. But you forgot what mothers do when you corner their children.”
“Margaret, you’re an old woman with a nine-millimeter pistol against a global defense contractor,” Miller sneered, raising his tablet. “In two minutes, a tactical strike team will rappel down that shaft. You and Ethan will be classified as domestic terrorists who blew up an underground pediatric wing. And Noah will go home to the installation where he belongs.”
“You’re wrong on two counts,” Margaret said evenly.
She didn't shoot Miller.
She swung the Glock six inches to the left and fired three rapid rounds directly into the primary hydraulic manifold connecting the catwalk to the cavern’s coolant supply.
*BANG. BANG. BANG.*
High-pressure pressurized liquid nitrogen erupted from the severed lines with the scream of a jet engine, instantly blanketing the catwalk in a sub-zero fog of freezing white vapor.
Miller shouted in shock as the arctic blast hit his arm, freezing the biometric tablet in his grip into brittle plastic and glass. The screen shattered, sending sparks flying into the mist.
Noah collapsed instantly back into Ethan’s arms, his eyes snapping open as the ultraviolet glow behind his ear flickered out. “Daddy! It’s cold! It’s so cold!”
“Run for the maintenance conduit!” Margaret yelled, grabbing Ethan’s jacket and hauling him toward an auxiliary tunnel marked with yellow hazard stripes.
Behind them, Miller dropped to one knee, clutching his frostbitten hand, his voice cracking with monstrous rage: “Execute Protocol Seven! Flood the silo! Drown the entire sector!”
May you like
Across the vast chamber, alarms began to howl like wounded wolves. Heavy iron floodgates at the far end of the cavern ground upward, and the deafening roar of seawater—millions of gallons rushing from an underwater sea trench—shook the foundations of the hospital above.
***
