Chapter 30 - The Sub-Level Blackout
"Ethan, please!" Clara took another frantic step forward, her eyes wide, tears finally spilling over her cheeks, cutting pale tracks through the soot on her face. "He is your son! Julian is your firstborn! You held him when he was five minutes old! You promised you would protect him!"
"I didn't know you existed down here!" Ethan screamed back. "You built a torture chamber beneath our family home! You bred his brother to be harvested like a laboratory animal!"
"I saved his life!" she roared.
"And you destroyed his soul!" Evelyn intercepted Clara, stepping between her and Ethan, pressing the smoking barrel of her pistol directly against Clara’s sternum. "Step back, Clara. I swear to God, I will put a hollow-point through your heart before you touch that baby."
Clara stared down at the barrel pressed into her chest, then up into Evelyn’s eyes. A cold, bitter smile curled the edge of her lips. "Evelyn Vance. My loyal cousin. Always living in my shadow. Always secretly wanting my life. My house. My husband."
"I took care of your family while you played God in a sewer," Evelyn whispered, her finger tightening on the trigger.
"You didn't take care of anything," Clara said softly. "You just followed orders. Whose orders do you think paid your mortgage, Evelyn? Who funded your brother’s legal defense three years ago?"
Evelyn froze.
Ethan’s gaze flicked from Evelyn to Clara. "What is she talking about?"
Before Evelyn could answer, the entire sub-level convulsed.
A deep, subterranean thud—like a detonation miles underground—rumbled through the bedrock. The halogen floodlights flickered violently, turned orange, and then died completely, plunging Sector Zero into absolute, suffocating darkness.
Only the red emergency LEDs along the perimeter floor remained, casting bloody, elongated shadows across the walls.
From the primary terminal across the room, an automated synthesizer spoke:
*EXTERNAL BREACH DETECTED: PERIMETER GATE THREE.*
*PRIMARY POWER: SEVERED.*
*FACILITY RUNNING ON RESERVE CAPACITOR.*
*AUXILIARY LOCKDOWN IN THREE MINUTES.*
"Mercer didn't come alone," Clara whispered, her arrogance evaporating into sheer terror. "He brought the buyers."
"What buyers?" Ethan demanded, his eyes adjusting to the crimson gloom, holding Leo tight with his left arm while cocking his revolver with his right.
"The syndicate funding the telomere research," Clara said, backing toward the shadows of the catwalk stairs. "Mercer didn't want the cure for Julian. He was selling the stabilized gene line to an offshore private consortium. They don't want Julian. They want Leo. They want the living template."
Footsteps—heavy, tactical, rhythmic—began descending the iron spiral staircase from the upper estate.
Three separate flashlight beams cut through the gloom at the top of the stairwell, sweeping down into the hexagonal chamber. The light caught the silhouettes of men in unmarked black tactical gear, carrying suppressed submachine guns.
"Down!" Ethan hissed.
May you like
He dragged Leo down behind the base of the airlock console just as the first burst of suppressed gunfire ripped through the space. Glass exploded outward in shimmering curtains of lethal shards.
***
