Chapter 13 - Shattered Seals
The heat radiating through the tungsten door was becoming unbearable. The scent of melting alloy and scorched seals began to seep into the chamber. Clara looked at the pendant resting around her neck.
A capacitor.
Her mother had never designed a simple lock. Elena had spent her life outthinking men who relied on brute force and armies. Clara ripped the silver pendant from its chain and examined it under the harsh lights of the pod terminal.
Along the rim of the teardrop casing were micro-serrations. Clara pressed both sides simultaneously with her thumb and forefinger.
The silver casing clicked and popped open. Inside rested a sliver of dark, iridescent crystal pulsing with a terrifying purple glow—a concentrated EMP core capable of disrupting an entire military facility’s electronic grid.
""Elena's final trump card,"" Clara breathed.
If she detonated the EMP in this sealed room, it would permanently fry the master locks on the mag-rail pod. But it would also destroy the pod’s electronic navigation systems, meaning she would have to launch it manually, blind, along the underground tracks.
Behind her, the first of the tungsten door’s heavy locking pins dissolved under the white-hot heat of the plasma torches. The mercenaries began hammering against the weakening metal with hydraulic rams.
Victor Blackwood stood behind them, his hands calmly resting in the pockets of his coat, watching her like a spider watching an ensnared fly.
Clara moved to the pod’s manual maintenance bay beneath the passenger cabin. She wedged the exposed crystal into the mag-rail's central fuse junction.
""Hold on, Alexander,"" she whispered, pulling the soundproof cover completely over the baby’s carrier.
She raised her sidearm, took aim at the crystal from five paces back, and fired.
A blinding sphere of violet light expanded instantly, swallowing the chamber in absolute silence. Every light in the facility exploded. The hum of the rail died. The plasma torches outside sputtered out, and the electronic override holding the pod’s hatch locked vanished.
The emergency pneumatic doors of the pod hissed open on residual pressure.
Clara scrambled inside the dark cabin, slamming the manual hatch shut behind her.
Outside, in the pitch-black corridor, Victor’s men used sledgehammers to finish off the weakened door. The tungsten slab collapsed inward with a thunderous crash.
Beams of high-powered tactical flashlights cut through the dust, locking onto the pod.
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""Rip that hatch open!"" Victor’s furious voice roared from the darkness. ""Drag them out!""
Clara, strapped into the pilot seat in the blacked-out cockpit, grabbed the manual hydraulic launch lever and yanked it back with every ounce of strength left in her body.
