Chapter 49 - Breached Sanctum
The air in the vault grew impossibly heavy.
"No," I whispered, tears spilling freely down my cold-numbed cheeks. "Dad, no... you can't ask that of her."
Lily looked up at the flickering green projection of the grandfather she adored. Her small hand touched the glass tube. "Grandpa?"
"Mommy," Lily said, turning to look at me, her face shining with an innocence and courage that shattered my heart into a thousand pieces. "Grandpa told me that sometimes a seed has to go into the dark ground so the flowers can come back in the spring. I don't want the lights to stay out forever."
Before I could answer, a violent shockwave slammed into the subterranean bunker.
The concrete walls shuddered, raining dust down upon the magnetic tape cabinets. The lights flickered wildly. From the tunnel above, the unmistakable chatter of suppressed automatic gunfire echoed through the ventilation shafts.
"They breached the flume!" Markus yelled, cocking his weapon and sprinting toward the inner blast gate. "They followed our tracks through the snow!"
Graham was already moving, dragging a heavy metal desk to create a firing position at the vault's entryway. "Claire! Get to the console! Insert the silver drive!"
The outer bulkhead exploded in a shower of sparks and jagged steel.
Markus took two rounds to the chest before he could raise his rifle, his body collapsing against the conduit pipes. Graham returned fire immediately, the deafening roar of his carbine filling the circular chamber as brass casings clattered across the floor.
Three black-clad operatives in full tactical armor moved through the smoke, firing with ruthless precision. Graham dropped one with a shot to the throat, but a high-caliber round caught him in the side, spinning him around and slamming him against the console desk.
"Claire!" Graham roared, blood spitting from his lips as he fired his last remaining rounds with one hand. "Do it! We can't hold them!"
I sprinted to the brass console, my hands trembling violently as I shoved the silver flash drive into the terminal's mechanical reader slot.
May you like
A mechanical aperture opened in the center of the console, revealing a glowing brass acoustic microphone.
"Lily! Sing!" I screamed through the deafening noise of gunfire and tearing metal. "Sing the fourth verse, baby! Now!"
