THE MORNING AFTER GRANDPA'S FUNERAL, MY PARENTS CAME TO STEAL HIS HOUSE. THEY NEVER EXPECTED THE MAN WAITING BEHIND HIS STUDY DOOR / Chapter 95 / 118

Chapter 95 - Pressure Hull Fracture

The water beneath the surface was an icy, pitch-black void.

My tactical flashlight flickered to life, its halogen beam cutting through clouds of suspended rust and hydraulic fluid. The current was brutal, dragging my body toward the spinning blades of the secondary cooling turbine. My boots slammed against the steel floorplates as I crawled against the raging undertow, hand over hand along the structural support beams.

There it was.

Mounted on the bulkhead beneath the intake turbine was a heavy, cast-iron lever sealed with a mechanical padlock bearing the double-V insignia of Arthur Vance.

I pulled Richard's acoustic resonator from my vest. The device had no screen, no buttons—only a threaded brass dial on its base. Remembering the date of Arthur's supposed death—the sequence he had made me memorize as a child under the guise of an old carpenter’s rule—I turned the brass ring: *0-9-1-4.*

The cylinder vibrated intensely in my grip, emitting a high-frequency acoustic pulse that sent bubbles boiling off its metal casing. I jammed the tip of the resonator against the padlock.

The internal tumblers inside the lock vibrated violently under the harmonic resonance, shattering into fine metal shavings. The shackle snapped open.

I threw the lock aside, grabbed the massive lever with both hands, planted my boots against the bulkhead, and pulled with every ounce of strength remaining in my bruised and battered body.

*CLANK.*

The internal gears shifted. The drainage valves didn't close—they reversed.

Instead of venting seawater into our chamber, the massive secondary pumps engaged, venting thousands of gallons of pressurized compressed air from the ballast tanks into the sector.

A monstrous wall of bubbles and displaced pressure rocketed upward, violently hurling me toward the surface.

I breached the water, gasping for air, just as the quartz viewport exploded.

A jet of deep-sea water, pressurized to hundreds of atmospheres, punched through the glass like a solid iron spear. The hyper-velocity stream struck Eleanor Vance squarely in the chest, obliterating her into the steel bulkhead behind her in an instant of sheer, brutal hydraulic violence.

"Julian! Grab the ladder!" Richard's scream was barely audible over the apocalyptic roar of the collapsing room.