Chapter 16 - The Ash beneath the Floorboards
The severance of the central cord triggered a chain reaction throughout the sub-levels.
Klaxons howled in deafening, staggered rhythms. Overhead, the reinforced concrete ceilings groaned under millions of tons of shifting mesa stone. High above the catwalks, the emergency purge protocol activated: red strobe lights bathed the chamber in the color of fresh slaughter as automated vents began hissing pressurized sulfur gas into the lower vaults.
"Foolish... ignorant savage!" Halden dragged himself upright against the console, clutching his shattered shoulder. His grey suit was drenched in black blood and chemical fire. Half of his face was blistered white from the ruptured steam pipe, his eye swollen shut, yet his surviving hand still held the detonation key.
"You have doomed the work of three generations!" he hissed, spitting blood onto the dials. "The organism will not die, Isabel. It will merely consume the surface instead of waking under control!"
He slammed his hand down onto the emergency scuttle valve.
Deep within the floorboards, iron grates slid open with a screech of rusted gears. From the bowels of the mesa rose a wave of white-hot geothermal steam, followed by the sound of rising subterranean magma. The glass vats began to shatter from the extreme temperature shift, boiling the remaining embryonic horrors in their tanks.
Isabel dragged herself through the scalding water to Naira’s side. The child was pale as chalk, her breathing shallow, fluttering like the wings of a trapped bird. The silver wound at the base of her skull had closed partially, weeping a translucent oil that smelled of ozone.
Isabel scooped the limp child into her arms, binding Naira tightly to her chest with the remains of her canvas duster.
Behind them, a bloody hand suddenly clamped onto Halden’s ankle.
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Elena, somehow still breathing despite the ruptured collar, hauled her ruined torso across the floor like a wounded viper. Her sightless face was fixed on Halden with pure, venomous ecstasy. "We burn together, Elias," she croaked, her broken teeth bared in a death grin. "To the furnace."
Elena dragged him backward. Halden screamed, his iron cane clattering into the darkness as both of them tumbled over the guardrail, plunging into the roaring, superheated abyss of the core below.
